


Seven Smiles for Seven Men

by Jejune (Turquoise54), Turquoise54



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Profanity, Sexual Themes, Social Hierarchy, courtesan - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-01-16 15:13:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21273257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turquoise54/pseuds/Jejune, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turquoise54/pseuds/Turquoise54
Summary: || short-story ||[ yandere! m! various x f! courtesan! reader ]She smiles for merchant and noble—husband and stranger. Her disposition is unassuming, and her mien even less so, but her apparent meekness has begun to lose its persuasion.Her pride dangles from the fingers of the men whose company she keeps, and she walks carefully betwixt them, dutifully toeing the lines they draw for her, but despite her obedience, they have begun to doubt her sincerity—her honesty.They wonder as to the true nature of her smiles: if perhaps the ones she turns upon them are not as novel and particular as those they reserve especially for her. Their doubt—exaggerated but perhaps not entirely unfounded—has given rise to a terrible desperation, and little good comes of the desperate lover.[ also on Quotev ]





	1. EMERY

**Author's Note:**

> A little message before we begin...
> 
> This one-shot, being rather long (much too long to fit into one chapter), has been split into seven different parts, each written from the point of view of a different character. Being that this one-shot is so lengthy (and that I have trouble writing one thing at a time, or with continuing to write a story that's incredibly long), I have decided to post this one-shot, though incomplete, so that I might be able to better hold myself to the task of finishing it.
> 
> With that being said, I suppose I would also like to leave a little warning here. This is a yandere story featuring a reader-character that undertakes the role of a courtesan. It takes place in a vague town during some vague time in the past because I lost my history notes in the spaces between the cushions of my internet sofa. Due to these facts, the story is going to be a little dark and uncomfortable and maybe a bit raunchy, seeing as how, during this vague time in the past, the role of a courtesan was pretty sexual (though not solely) in nature. There also might be some language, seeing as how some characters keep their vocabulary as clean as their pig styes.
> 
> There's also going to be mention of religion and plenty of shout-outs to the Christian God, but I would like to state here that any actions taken by religious characters (or characters that consider themselves part of a certain religious faith) are not meant to be indicative of the religion as a whole and should not be interpreted as condemnatory of certain religious beliefs (or lack thereof).
> 
> Please do not continue reading if you find such subjects upsetting and/or triggering. If you feel for some reason or another that this author's note is not enough and that I should add some trigger warning to the story summary or tag this story as mature, please let me know.
> 
> I wish you a wonderful day, and if you choose to continue, then I also hope that you enjoy the story. Leave a comment if you want, or don't. Criticize and theorize to whatever degree your heart desires. Thank you.
> 
> TL;DR: This yandere story contains mature themes, including (but not limited to) descriptions of sex and violence. If such material upsets you, please leave now. I also don't hate religion. Go figure.

**warning:** language

**ꜰᴏʀɢᴇᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴀʏ**

* * *

**_SUNLIGHT WAS A CALL, AND THE BODY ROSE TO ANSWER IT_, **but the lure of company—of spending another moment in the presence of his beloved—had Emery clinging to his simple bed even as the morning sunlight began to graze the bottoms of the bedposts. He had no need for the heat of daylight; the warmth of she who laid beside him was a hundred times as comforting and sweet as that of the blazing sun.

Emery wrapped his arms around her—clung to her with the strength of desperate adoration. He could feel the line of golden sunlight advancing, marching up the sheets like a determined army—a steady disease, threatening to take from him what little time he had left in his wife’s company.

He felt her stir—sensed the mattress and blanket shift when she moved—and without thinking, he tensed. His arms grew firm and tight around her, and he buried his nose in her hair and tried to ignore the growing brightness of the room by hiding in the shadows cast by her form. The prideful sun could advance as far as it wished, but when in the comfort of shade, it could not blind him.

“Emery…”

He heard her voice—the soft sound that poured forth only from her lips—quiet and muffled by space and cloth, but still undeniably intelligible. He heard her call his name, the way in which her tongue and gums fit around the syllables, and her teeth chewed the letters, but in response, he was silent. He did not move; he did not flinch or twitch or make any motion that could have been interpreted as a sign of waking—of awareness. He merely laid there, quiet and content beside her, willing enough to simply bask in her presence.

Ignorance was euphoric—delightful. It meant remaining content and comfortable in a warm bed, curled around the shape of a woman lovely and wondrous. Here, he could disregard the loud sunlight—the day, so bright and raucous—and instead immerse himself in the shade’s quiet satisfaction.

“Emery,” she murmured his name again, and he felt something brush against his arm. Her hand—it was her hand, her fingers and palm, moving to press against his skin, curling around the shapes of his wrist and forearm.

Her touch was soft and her flesh warm—warm enough to melt into. He wanted to press into it—inundate himself with her, until he drowned in her heat—but then she would know his closed eyes and steady breathing were a farce.

He heard a long and winding sigh slip from her lips and felt her shoulders fall as the breath left her lungs. She curled her fingers around his wrist, and the warmth he’d attempted to bury himself in started to pull away.

“Would you…mind letting go, dear?” He heard her murmur, but again he made no move to reply.

Minding was all he could do, but when she moved, the sunlight that advanced on the room slipped into the corner of his right eye, and the muscles in his face tightened and constricted. A grimace wrinkled the skin of his forehead and nose, and suddenly he tensed and turned his head—tried to find a comfortable dimness to rival the gaudy sunlight.

His bluff was called.

She made a noise—a sigh or a grunt—and the fingers she’d wrapped around his wrist curled tighter about his skin. “It’s morning, dear. We have things to do.” She pulled against him, and when his embrace did not wane, he felt her turn—felt the shape of her spine and back shift and move until it was replaced by the sensation of her chest against his own. “I need to get ready, Emery.”

He felt her stare—her eyes, watching his face, awaiting his response, for surely he would respond—but silence was all that met her words. A steady, purposeful silence, broken only by the quiet sounds of breathing.

The line of sunlight moved steadily up the bedsheets, and the winding song of paper-boned birds began to bleed into the tense quiet that filled the bedroom. He felt her chest rise and fall against his as she breathed, and every now and again the warmth of her breath would wash the crown of his head. The rhythm was steady and sure, like a lullaby—a song, sung to carry him back to sleep.

“Emery,” she hummed. Her voice was clear and smooth, now that there was less space to muffle her words, and he felt the buzz of it in her breast, how it hummed against his chest. “I know you’re awake.”

Something grabbed at his lips—itched and prodded at them to curl upwards, to fit into the shape of a smile—but he fought against it, or made to. The urge was strong, welling up in his chest with all the colorful buoyancy of amusement, and it pulled at his lips with a fierceness difficult to battle.

He heard her laugh, and the sound of it—of the delightful peal that curled up from her throat and breast—only bolstered the grin that was rising to his face. 

“See? I know you can hear me,” she chuckled softly, her voice smooth and golden with amusement. “You’re smiling.”

The satisfaction folded pleasantly around his chest grew warmer, too warm to simply settle into, and despite the luring call of the shade’s siren song, he peeked open one shining eye, and then, after a moment, let open the other. The sunlight had advanced to their chests, but his love was leaning on her elbow, and her form kept the brilliant dawn from burning his sleepy eyes.

The daylight outlined the shape of her—her head and shoulders and arms—and glowed softly in the locks of her beautiful hair. It covered her like she was an angel, a being divine and good and otherworldly. She wore it like a shawl—a veil, like the one she’d been dressed in on the day they were wed—but if he were to let her go, then the light would surround her and melt over the curves of her flesh like a gleaming white-and-golden robe.

“Good morning,” he murmured. The smile that had played at his lips now curved them into a gentle grin, and a delightful affability shone in his gaze when he met his wife’s eyes. A short hum buzzed in her chest at his innocent greeting, but a small amused smile was breaking across her face, and it was upon that grin that Emery focused.

“‘Good morning’, hmn?” she echoed. An inquiring lilt dusted her voice, and he watched how the sound moved her lips and curled her tongue, but then he felt a hand on his chin—soft fingers, their pads pressing against the skin just under his chin—and his eyes fled back to hers. She was watching him—observing him with limpid, careful eyes narrowed by a smile. “It is a good morning, isn’t it?”

His mind was hazy with delight—with a golden euphoria so cloying it turned the world yellow—and the grin that decorated his lips grew wide and full with his shining teeth. He hummed in pleasant agreement, and then he lowered his head and pressed his cheek against her chest. The tip of his nose brushed over the skin of her collarbone, and the steady beating of her heart sank into his ear, and there he mumbled into her flesh, “It’s always a good morning with you.”

A sudden tenseness constricted the muscles in her body. It was like a flinch—a twitch, rocking over her—and a frown almost pulled at Emery’s lips, but then her muscles relaxed, and the moment was gone just as quickly as it had come.

“That’s so sweet. You’re so sweet.” He heard her sigh. He felt her warm fingers slip from beneath his chin and closed his eyes when they came to rake through his short hair. “So sweet and kind. Mother would have loved you…” Then she mumbled something, but her voice was so quiet and his mind flush with such decadent warmth that he caught only a short, “—she was right.”

He began to settle back into the bed, his head laid comfortably atop her chest, but then she spoke again, and the hum of her voice buzzed in the bones of his skull.

“Oh no you don’t,” she chastised, and the fingers that ran through his hair stilled. “It’s time to rise and shine; the morning’s too good to waste.”

She pulled against his grasp, and her body moved just so, allowing the line of advancing daylight to fall across Emery’s face. The sun turned the world that was once pleasantly dark a bright, bloody red, and the smile that had curled Emery’s lips soured to an unpleasant grimace. All hopes for slumber had been dashed, mutilated by a stubborn dawn, and he forced his eyes back open to squint at the traitorous window.

She was climbing free of the covers the moment Emery’s grip loosened, but she still caught sight of his displeased frown. “Emery? What’s got you so sluggish, dear?” She stood near the edge of the bed, her soft eyes fixed upon him. “It’s not like you to be so weary in the morning.”

Emery’s gaze fled to her, and the memory—the reason—came crawling back to the surface of his mind as steadily as the sun had advanced upon the room. The sunlight bathed his wife just as he thought it would. It rested on her shoulders and then came to fall down the length of her familiar body in soft lines finer than any sort of cloth he could ever hope to fashion, and its colors were warmer and brighter than all the dye under the heavens.

She was marvelous, a creature devoid of blemish or fault, born as sinless as the Blessed Mother. Immaculate and perfect and divine. It was little wonder why the Devil tried so desperately to claim her, to wrap his corrupted fingers around her immaculate soul and add her to his loathsome collection of the lecherous damned.

But the Devil would never succeed in taking her—he could not. The Lord above prohibited it, and Emery would rather suffer white-hot torment for all of eternity in the agonizing pits of hell than allow such a grievous transgression.

If only she didn’t tease him so.

“What’re you gonna wear?” He sat up in the bed, but his eyes didn’t once leave hers when he moved. A coldness had settled in the pit of his stomach, chasing away the pleasant warmth that had comforted his lungs and heart, and he eyed his wife with a newfound firmness.

But a teasing smile played at her lips, and she began to move across the room, her steps light and playful. The sunlight followed her, flowing off her bare skin like a cape as she moved to the wardrobe. “Why, clothes, of course,” she replied slyly.

The chill grew colder, and it bit at his skin and sharpened the edge of his voice. “What kind?”

She did not fear the firmness in his voice, or she did not hear it, for she turned her back to him without so much as a flinch or tremor. “What else but the kind you wear, dear?” she teased, her hands moving to open the wardrobe.

He stared at her back, at her bare skin, covered only by a scattering of fading bites and bruising kisses, and highlighted by a robe of soft yellow sunlight. His teeth would fit snugly in the patterns of those paling marks, as they always should. As long as he lived, no other was to touch her in such places, least of all force such savage marks into her tender skin, just as his flesh was only hers to know, and could be neither felt nor marred by any other.

Such was the agreement—the promise. The vow, made in the presence of the Lord God Himself.

Yet he’d seen on her tender skin, in places that should be made bare only to his eyes, the mark of bites left by teeth that were not his own. He knew they were not, for he knew the mouth to which such teeth belonged and the face in which such a mouth sat. He had met the man to which the face belonged, and he’d looked upon the contract that allowed for the teeth possessed by that man to sink into and mar the skin of his wife.

“I’d like to see.” It was a proposal—it should have been a proposal—but when it climbed from his throat and curled off his tongue it sounded to the ear much sharper—much colder—than one.

Perhaps it was adultery, but it was no affair—no sin such that he could see, not in how she’d explained it. She did not engage in such licentious acts for the purpose of gratification—of gaining the benefits that he, Emery, bestowed upon her—but she continued instead so as to aid him, so as to further her poor husband’s place in their shameful, sin-ridden society.

Still, he did not like it. He never had.

She paused, then. Perhaps the chill that had seeped into his tone had finally reached her ears. He watched her hesitate—saw the muscles in her back tighten about her shoulder blades. For a moment, he thought she might deny him, but then she replied, “Of course, dear.”

Her voice was light and soft, but he thought he heard a tremble in her words—a flinch of her tongue. The robe of sunlight she wore slipped down her bare shoulder, and he departed from the bed to right it. His movements were quiet, but the floor creaked beneath him, and the bedframe spoke of his departure.

He moved just behind her, close enough to feel the heat that emanated from her skin, and he placed his hands on her shoulders. Her flesh was soft against his calloused fingers, but he could feel how the muscle just beneath was tense and firm, and so he rubbed his thumb against her skin—traced the indentations his teeth had left in a mark just above her collarbone.

He had not desired to allow her to share the pleasures of her flesh, but she had reasoned with him. He could not climb on his own. People were corrupt and cruel. They would never allow him to step outside the bounds of his caste; his merit had been decided at birth, and there it would stay.

But she could change that. For him. For their children.

“Are you coming back this evening?” he asked quietly. He stood taller than her, and he bent his head to murmur the words into her ear.

He felt her muscles relax beneath his touch, and she shook her head. “I’d assume not. It’s been nearly a week.” A small laugh then bubbled up from the depths of her chest, and he felt it crawl up her spine to shake her shoulders. “Do you know what he said in the letter?”

He stepped back, and she turned to face him, a smile, small but lacking humor, decorating her lips. Only one other had kissed them—had tasted her.

One was more than enough.

“No,” he lied, but his heart did not skip, nor did his skin prickle at the sound of his dishonesty.

Liar.

She turned back around and returned to searching through the wardrobe, and he stood back to watch her. “He said the length of my absence was outrageous. He was ‘out of his mind’ to have allowed it.”

Emery’s eyes narrowed, and he replied rather bitingly, “Dunno if he was ever in it to begin with.”

She chuckled at his words, and he released the breath he hadn’t realized he had held. She had not jumped to defend the man, though he was not worried that she would. She loved him—Emery, her husband. No other man took residence in the space of her heart.

“He must be comfortable enough to test the line,” she replied. Her voice grew muffled as she dressed in the clothes she'd found. “He’s an entrepreneur, after all.”

He hummed, but he truly couldn’t care what the man called himself. He was a man—a lord—and Emery struggled enough in remembering to call him such.

He was a man who found some strange, depraved delight in fucking women who were not his wife. A man his own wife now entertained and embellished with her company. Only her company; never her love.

She did not love him.

She could not.

“A little help, dear?” Her voice broke him out of his stupor, and he moved forward again to help her with the ties of her corset, and then the buttons of her dress. His fingers had grown nimbler, more adept at working with the finer fixings of her clothes. Or perhaps he’d just grown familiar with the way in which the buttons fit into their holes, and how tight he was to lace the corset.

When he was finished, she thanked him, and then he stepped back again to gain a better view, but though he stared, and stared and stared, a thought had slunk its claws into his mind, and it distorted his attention like light through a shard of warped glass.

She watched him watch her, and she tried for a light smile, but the grin looked uncertain. Worried.

What was she worried for?

“Well?” she prompted him.

The sunlight fell like a veil about her head and shoulders, and her wide, cautious eyes stared up at him through it. She was clothed modestly, and yet her beauty was not bound by the material that covered her skin. He could shake his head, but it would not matter. Her attire was not the true source of his displeasure.

Had it ever been?

For a moment, he was silent, but when he did speak his voice was quiet, but calm—soft, but sure. “Do you love me?” The words fell from his lips in a smooth murmur, but she had heard him. He could see it in her eyes.

They grew wide with a bright surprise, but then quickly narrowed as the meaning of his question sunk into her skin. She was quiet for a moment, and a softness bled into her flesh. “Is this…Is this about Lord Dupont?” she replied after a short pause, her voice quiet.

Something tightened around his chest, or perhaps it was his chest itself that grew tight. She hadn’t answered right away; she hadn’t said yes.

“You didn’t answer.” His voice was a little louder now, a little firmer—tighter, like the feeling in his chest.

She stared up at him, and the look in her eyes was soft and shining, but he couldn’t read it. He didn’t know what it was she saw when she gazed upon him. Then, quiet and sure, she bridged the distance between them and brought her warm hands to his cold face. The heat was comforting and pleasant, as pleasant as her touch.

Her eyes did not leave him, and a warm, rich emotion shone in her gaze. He recognized it, but he waited to name it. He was a commoner, but he was no fool. No greater one than that which he might be proven to have been, should his wife—the object of his affections and receiver of any and all adoration and love and prosperity he may possess—have failed to care for him as he thought she did.

“My dear, you needn’t ever worry the depths of my love.” Her voice was but a murmur, soft and sweet, smoothing his aching heart with a kind, comforting touch. “There is only one man I have ever loved, or ever will love. My heart belongs to no other.”

The tightness fled, and a deep, soft breath filled Emery’s lungs. He wrapped his arms around her and drew her to him as though he had not seen her in years, his grip firm and sure and flush with adoration.

She loved him.

It was all he needed—her love. The world with its binding restrictions and superfluous rules could just off and fuck itself.

He kissed her, her lips, so soft and familiar. He tasted her and melted into her and tried to drown in her, in the shape of her and him and what came of them coming together. He let his eyes fall closed, and in the darkness, he recovered a firmness to the comfort.

Then, after a moment, he pulled himself out from the place in which he had fallen just enough so that he could open his eyes and embrace her. He held her to his chest, then. Simply held her, until sound could form in his throat, and his tongue could fit it into the shape of letters.

As the words left his lips, his eyes fell upon the space behind her. A cloth of shimmering golden sunlight gleamed atop the floor, just beside her feet. Her veil had fallen.

“I love you.”

* * *

**ᴛʜᴇ ᴅʀᴀᴘᴇʀ.**


	2. ANDRÉ

**warning:** nsfw (non-explicit; consensual)

**ʀᴇᴀᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ꜱɪɢɴꜱ**

* * *

**_THERE HAD BEEN FEWER CLOUDS CLOTTING THE DUSTY BLUE SKY_ **the morning Lady Corinne Dupont had left for her brother’s estate. The heavens had moved in such swift junction with her departure that even the least eloquent of religious philosophers could have stood to convince André that the clouds’ movement had been a sign from the Lord on High.

Their claims of such heavenly intervention would be grossly false, however; and so in making such an argument they would only prove themselves decidedly unsound, but so to would he by choosing to agree with such loquacious orators. There was nothing decidedly divine in the movement of the clouds. They were but masses of water vapor, condensed and visible, pushed across the earth’s atmosphere by currents of wind.

The puffy clouds had been parted not by some invisible hand but the breeze, and it was but happenstance that sunlight poured out across the sloping, crescent-shaped driveway just as his wife’s carriage rolled out onto the path that would take her from his estate. It was not the will of some heavenly being that bound the sky or dictated its movements; neither, then, did such a god command his.

When he clasped his hands behind his back and watched his wife depart without moving to wave her goodbye, he acted in such an impersonal manner of his own free-will, and when his eyes caught sight of the lacquered wooden carriage rolling ever so leisurely down the path his wife had taken when departing, the smile that rose to color and soften the firm line of his lips did so of its own accord.

An eagerness sunk its teeth into the heels of his feet, and he began moving, walking with practiced alacrity down the steps and across the driveway and advancing quicker than the footmen who waited just behind him. The sunlight that spilled across his property washed over his head and body, covering him in a warmth as pleasant as that which had blossomed in the flesh of his chest. The heat was but a taste, however—a tantalizing hint of the satisfaction that awaited him.

How restlessly had he attended it.

There was an eagerness to his steps, a giddiness that almost felt strange, buzzing as it did just beneath his flesh, prickling his skin and chewing anxiously away at the muscles of his arms and legs. It pressed harshly at his patience, at the awful kindness that had infected his mind. He needn’t have been so thoughtful, waiting as he had. Patience was no reward, and for it little was ever given; the prickling giddiness of anxiety agitated the tender flesh of his stomach, and there was no comfort to be found in the sour taste of gastrointestinal acid.

The carriage rolled to meet him, and he stopped as it did, but the warmth infecting his skin pooled into the flesh of his heels. His body was rocking itself back and forth on the balls of his feet before his mind could think to stop it, and the man perched in the driver’s seat turned a curious, narrowed eye upon him.

“Everything alright, m’lord?” The man’s voice was muffled but familiar, though vaguely so, and for a moment, brief as it was, André’s gaze broke away from the carriage and fled to him.

The driver’s glare was not unkind, but the heat that had softened André’s lips had not yet bled into the surrounding muscles of his face, and he gazed upon the driver with sharp, callous eyes. He had gathered again the reigns of his body—all the nerves and flesh that prickled with a biting warmth—and he silenced the rocking of his anxious feet. He was a man of noble breeding, and he stood tall and proud upon calm, steady feet.

“Just fine, thank you,” he replied curtly. The line of his mouth had hardened, and the firmness colored his voice a gray cold and devoid of polite warmth.

The driver’s once kind eyes narrowed and sharpened at André’s tone, and the lord watched the man settle back into his seat. He pressed against it in what must have been some deluded hope to make distance between himself and the nobleman, and when he spoke, his voice had lost the muffle of warm familiarity, but the words that curled up from his tongue fell on deaf ears.

Footmen had moved past André, their hands at the ready to grab luggage and handles and dainty palms. One’s gloved fingers had just moved to grasp and open the carriage’s door, but now André’s hand was there, and the footman who had tried to aid the passenger in her departure was trying to regain his balance just a few steps away.

A pang, pale and buzzing, colored the tendons of André’s wrists and thrummed just underneath the flesh of his palms. He felt the ache collect in the heels of his hands in tight, dark-colored knots, but the hum in his chest dulled its edge, and he curled his fingers around the handle of the carriage’s door with comfortable ease.

He tugged open the door, and the hum grabbed ahold of his eyes and head and directed both to look upon the carriage’s inner confines. A woman’s face, familiar and flush with a warmth as refreshing as a fire in the dead of winter, peered out at his own from beneath the wide brim of her hat, and the firmness that had returned to harden the line of his mouth began once more to dissipate, fading beneath the soft light of amicability.

The woman’s mouth was shaped like a crescent moon, and the smile reached all the way to her shining eyes. It was a familiar grin; he could recall when he had first laid eyes upon it, all the promise that had lain in the line of that grin. The brilliance therein could pierce the cloying, lonely darkness from whence he had come. She needed only an aide, a guide who could rouse the potential that lay within her and draw it forth into reality.

He knew the shape of potential, how to spy it and cultivate its growth. Such a talent was but a necessity in a profession akin to his own.

“_Bonjour_, my darling.” He offered his free hand up to her, and the warmth bleeding into his lips colored his tongue. His voice was as smooth as the polished floors of his manor, and the shine in his eyes was like varnish. The wait and its agonizing drain upon his patience had come to an end; his darling courtesan was now before him. “What an unparalleled _delight _it is to finally set my eyes upon you once again.”

Surprise flashed across the woman’s face, bright and sudden, but then her lips parted, and a delightful sound—a laugh—curled up from her tongue. “Oh, my!” she exclaimed, her kind, smiling eyes wide. “Why, _bonjour_, my lord; you truly never cease to amaze me.” She placed her hand in the palm of his own, and the warmth of her skin bled through her gloves to mingle with the hum buzzing in his fingers. “I certainly wasn’t expecting such an _eager_ welcome.”

“And why is that, darling?” André held on gently to her hand, and his gaze moved from her face only to watch her skirts as she descended from the carriage. The hum had changed its tune, and now it urged his return to the manor—to the chambers he called his own. “I did not spy you for a near sennight; such absence is cruel agony to the more fervent lover.”

André let the carriage door fall shut behind the woman when her feet touched the ground, and then his eyes rose to meet hers once more. The shape of a crescent still commanded her lips, but it was nearly hidden in the shadow the brim of her hat had cast over her eyes and cheeks to shelter them from the hot glare the sun cast upon his estate.

“Well, of that I _am _certain, for ferocity doth often burn,” she said to him, her tone light and teasing, “but the virtues of patience can heal even the most awful of such loathsome pains.”

He exchanged the hold of her hand for the comfort of her arm and then began for the manor, and, dimly, he heard from behind the snap of the reigns as the carriage driver spurred his horse into movement. The footmen knew where to take the woman’s possessions, and they did not interrupt him as he led the courtesan up the manor steps.

“For the more feeble of aches, darling, perhaps they do,” André replied. His voice was smooth, and the sharpness with which he had regarded the carriage driver was far removed from his tone. He brought his free hand to the arm she had linked with his own and placed his fingers over hers, and he angled his head to allow his gaze to fall across the comely design of her face. “But even the most divine of patience’s virtues could never hope to dampen the agony that is a moment spent devoid of the delights of your enchanting company.”

His words caused her familiar smile to waver, and he watched the line of her mouth recede to a shy curve that she made to hide under the brim of her hat. Her timidity only fed the urge buzzing within him, calling him to indulge in desires made indecent when partaken outside of the confines of intimate chambers.

How pleasantly familiar it was: the tones of their banter and the shape of her hands. Familiar enough for their absence to have been known and lamented, and perhaps even better-known than those of his lawful wife.

How terribly would he despair Lady Dupont’s departure? How agonizing could it prove to be, if he had offered more notice to the passing of the clouds?

After a short breath, his companion spoke, and he heard her tongue catch on the skin of her bashful lips. “What a sly charmer my lord has become,” she mused aloud. “He speaks now in such sweet, silver tongues.” She tilted her head up, and André caught a glimpse of her eyes, how they gleamed with a mischievous, and almost suspicious, light. “Should I call you Romeo, my lord? Or perhaps you’d rather honeybee, for the sugary, honeyed phrases you employ?”

André and she had now reached the front doors of the manor, and the servants waiting on the porch for them had already pulled the doors open and stood aside to let their master and his guest through. As they passed over the threshold, André leaned toward her. The brim of her hat brushed lightly against his temple when he drew so near to her face, but he paid the pressure little mind.

His lips hovered as close to her covered ear as her hat would allow, but the scent of her it could not deny him. “Any name coaxed from your lips would ring just as pleasantly in the ear as the last, my dear,” he murmured, his fingers tightening briefly around her own in a short, firm squeeze, “but I doubt that, by the end of this long-awaited night, you’ll still possess a capacity to utter any word at all.”

He felt her arm tremble in his grasp, shaken by a shiver that had run down her spine, but her smile would not be bucked, and her steps did not falter as he led her to the drawing-room.

“You think to test me, love?” she asked, her voice equally low. Her smooth tone had grown firmer with the thought of challenge, and the sound of it warmed the buzzing in his chest, but the endearment that had fallen from her lips further softened the line of his mouth until he could not help but share in her smile.

Her endearments and their pleasant intimacy had wormed their way into the softer corners of André’s heart. They were not the pet names that fell from his lips, the ‘my darling’s and ‘my dear’s; she offered hers to no other, save for her husband, of course.

“Would I be wrong in thinking such? Certainly, our lengthy separation has not worked to _sharpen_ you,” he replied without pausing. He pressed back against the urge spreading through his limbs and did what he could to ignore the tempting call of his chambers.

He was not some common, vulgar brute, and she was no base street prostitute; decency demanded courtesy, and the needs of guests must be first attended to, nevermind their status, or lack thereof. Still, the heat bore relentlessly down upon his tongue, and he added, almost smugly, “Do you presume to prove my assumptions false?”

Now they stood in the confines of the drawing-room, but he had yet to release her arm, and she had refrained from pulling away. He felt her gloved fingers curl into the sleeve of his coat, and a thought, there and gone before he could truly appreciate its intricacies, passed over the panes of her face. She moved her head, and though the glimmer of challenge still brightened the color of her eyes, a dullness had come to mute it.

“Do I?” she asked lightly. Her tone was as dubious as her smile was ambivalent, and it was then that she made to slip her arm free of his hold. “Perhaps, after I have time to collect myself, I may.”

He swallowed what sour taste her response had left embittering the flesh of his tongue, and the heat of his eagerness grew cooler, easier to press back against. “But of course, my dear,” he replied, the line of his mouth still soft. “You must be weary; it has been quite some time since you last made such a trip.”

She nodded her head, and the shadow her hat cast across her face grew and fell with her movements. “Indeed.”

His eyes followed her, and when her hands went to remove her cape he moved quickly to aid her. His bare fingers brushed fleetingly, and not entirely unintentionally, over the skin of her neck as he aided her. Her flesh was warm and tender, and the heat buzzing in his chest flashed a sudden white-hot color before settling back into a steady simmer.

Common decency chastised his unabashed eagerness, but pleasure was plenty keen to drown civility’s cries. It was only in her moving to sit down in a nearby armchair that he managed, albeit not without some difficulty, to quiet such a cry of longing.

The scent of her lingered in the fabric of her cape, but still, he handed the clothing off to a nearby maid. It would be foolish to cling desperately to so small a piece of her when she, in full, sat just before him.

“Are you peckish, my darling?” he asked, moving to take the chair nearest her own. “It’s past noon. Perhaps you’d like something sweet to nibble on?”

She had just begun removing her gloves when the question had fallen from André’s lips, but now she paused. “Oh, I’m quite alright, love, but thank you.”

She spoke lightly enough, but André heard the quick flutter of hesitation in her voice, the courtesy that masked her true intentions. She was such a quick study; it nearly brought a glimmer of pride to his eye.

“Are you certain?” he pressed, leaning his elbow on the arm of his chair. “It would be of no issue.”

She placed her hands, still bound by the fabric of her gloves, in her lap, folded like a proper lady. “Well,” she began slowly, uncertainly, “if you do insist so, then I suppose a light nibble would do no harm.”

A small smile, triumphant and pleased, curled the softened line of André’s mouth. “_Fantastique_,” he exclaimed approvingly, slipping for a moment into a more familiar tongue. It was an improper habit he had thought to have purged himself of long ago. The phrases and sounds and intimacy of such a tongue were to be saved for more respectable affairs: subjects of business or confidence. It had no place in the company of a woman whose profession society did frown so heavily upon.

Why, then, had it only grown to further possess his tongue?

André turned to call forth one of his servants, but then she continued, her tone now strengthened by her growing certainty, “That is, of course, if you would not mind sharing such a brief meal with me.”

Her words did reign in his immediate pleasure, and, slowly, he turned back to face her. The crescent of her mouth was curved into a sly shape, but her eyes shone only with glittering innocence. The sight tugged oddly at his chest, but it was amusement that arose in the flesh of his lungs and took tenderly to the line of his mouth.

“Oh?” He relaxed back into his chair, his eyes narrowing under the weight of his amusement. “You must forgive me, then, darling, for I’m afraid I have no appetite.”

“Is that so?” she replied, one eyebrow raised in question, or disbelief. “Yet—and please, do forgive me if I am wrong—you seem thinner than when I did last behold you.” Now it was she who leaned forward in her chair, though he did notice she took care not to allow her posture to fold. “Have you lapsed back into your habit of forgoing meals?”

His amusement wavered. She regarded him now as one might a particularly obstinate child, and such a look tightened the line of his mouth. “You know the particulars of my palate, my dear; I eat when necessary, as I always have,” he replied. He spoke matter-of-factly, but no edge or hardness sharpened his tone; she rarely ever earned such. “But if you determine, still, to worry for my diet and whatever effect it may wreak upon my health, then worry not. I never decline any dish _you_ offer.”

Her expression did not lighten at his response, and the line of her mouth began to fall into the shape of a disapproving frown. “I have no qualms with cooking, love, but I am not your chef,” she said evenly. “Why do you pay the man if you have no taste for his cuisine?”

Her frown embittered his already souring delight, but this time, he would not allow such disquiet to get the better of him. “I have little reason besides a desire to maintain the image of my name and family, darling,” he began flatly; he did not speak unkindly, but his voice was tighter than before, “but in the company of _nobles_, there’s little other argument needed.” He leaned forward in his chair, and his tone took a sarcastic edge that became almost sharp until he thought to dull it. “Is your curiosity satisfied now, _ma chatte_?”

Again, his more intimate tongue had slipped into his speech, drawn out by the uncomfortable heat scalding his throat, but his guest gave no inclination that she had noticed his mistake. Her gaze had fallen from his, and now she stared down at her lap and her hands, folded thereupon.

For a moment she was quiet, and something sharper, like worry, cut through the heat of his ire. Had he spoken too harshly? Of course, he would; it was just his luck: alienating his darling courtesan just as she had stepped back into his waiting arms.

Perhaps if he had more time in her company, if their contract would allow for such, then he might learn how to better control his sharp tongue. He would need to send for Aloysius, but then his wife would grow wary once she learned that he had called for a lawyer while she had been away at her brother’s estate.

Appearances were such awfully delicate things. If he were not bound so rigidly to them, he would detest them, but perhaps it was precisely such an obligation that caused him to loathe them so totally.

“Completely.” Her voice came without warning, and his eyes fled back to her face, unaware as he was that they had drifted away. She did not flinch when she met his gaze, and then she slowly reached out her hand to touch his arm. “Forgive me for pestering you so, love. I was merely worried, but I see now that my concern was _too_ great. For that, I am most apologetic.”

She spoke softly and honestly, and the sound of her voice readily cooled whatever heat lingered on his tongue. He did not smile, but the line of his lips loosened, and he did not shy away from her touch.

“With so lovely an apology, how could one ever hope to deny you forgiveness?” he replied lowly. He took her hand in his and lifted it to his lips, and then he placed a soft kiss upon her knuckles, though gloved they still were. “If you are still weary, perhaps, in lieu of a light meal, you would prefer instead to return to the comforts of your bedchamber?”

The crescent of a smile returned to shape her lips, and a pleasant shine flashed in her eyes. “That does sound delightful,” she agreed, her voice a soft murmur. “Might I share such a pleasure with my lord?”

From the deeper pits of André’s stomach, the low hum of the buzz that had earlier possessed his limbs began again to rise, climbing as steadily as the line of his mouth. “You may indeed.”

He stood from his chair, her hand in his, and she followed without complaint. He led her, and she allowed herself to be led, and at some point in time, his hand came to rest on the curve of her waist. If he or she spoke any words along the way, he would know not, for the buzz in his chest grew until his ears were brimming with its deafening roar, and it fell silent only when the door had closed behind them, and all the infuriating attire that sought to keep them separated was divested and cast aside.

She stood bare and naked before him, and the sight was just as pleasant now as it always was, but now he could appreciate the view—acknowledge the curves and edges, and bones and flesh of her in full—without worry of interruption. Pierre was busy with his lessons, and Corinne was moving further and further away by the minute; he had time on his hands, so why not indulge himself? Why not spoil himself with the luxury of desire, of caring for more than appearances and the continuation of some lineage: all of that which was decent in the public eye?

He kissed her first upon the lips, tenderly and then fervently, as passionately as a fire, for what else could describe that which blazed in his chest? It was more than a flame; it was a conflagration, unruly and ruinous, devastating all that crossed its path. He could not help but tremble in its light, but still, too, did he yearn for its warmth. It threatened to burn him, to ravage all he had learned to hold dear, but he recalled when it was just a spark, a short flicker amidst a pile of smoldering cinders, desperate to rise, to know the pleasure of warmth.

In her eyes it had burned, weak and feeble, ready to drown in the water of her desperate, frustrated tears. _He _had been the one to dry her eyes; _he_ had seen the flame and salvaged it, salvaged her and all her potential. It was not thanks to her brute of a husband or the god to whom his brother had bound his life that she now embraced him, that the taste of her flesh coated his tongue, and the warmth of her lips chased away the cold of a nobleman’s rigid responsibility.

If he had sown the seeds, should he be denied the harvest? Should he be refused the pleasures of a gleeful, full heart?

Upon the bed, they fell, tangled together in a shape he knew quite well. He kissed her and touched her and glowered sourly at the marks her husband had left marring her warm skin. The man was a brute—an animal. He left bruises and bites as though he were some senseless mutt, eager to mark that which he called his own. He mocked André, derided him without words.

_Look upon this union, André,_ the bruises and crescent shapes left by the cloth merchant’s teeth sneered._ Gaze upon this love of ours; you shan’t ever spy such like it otherwise._

So he glared upon them, and then he leaned his mouth to her shoulder and sunk his teeth into the flesh there, and in so doing he defended himself against her husband’s wordless, haranguing assault. He did it to spite the man, in spite of the man, and she was none the wiser.

He drew his attention then to the curves of her breast and stomach and, upon exploring all that could, let it then fall to the shape of her thighs and the tender sex that lay between them. He kissed and he bit and he touched, and the sounds he did elicit were at first reward enough, but then, as it always did, the warmth in his chest and arms and fingers swelled, and so, too, did his own eagerness.

She lay beneath him, and he could feel every curve and crease of her outer flesh, but the euphoria did not crash upon him until he was delighting in the pleasures of her more inner, intimate design. She did fit so snugly around him, and when she was brought to the height of her rapture, when warmth and sound became so loud and hot that they were indiscernible, the name that curled up from her bruising throat in a searing cry was his own.

It was almost a call, for he began falling soon after her, tumbling down from a place that existed only in shapes and colors that spoke of her. Without any need for a reminder, he removed himself from her satisfying warmth, though, for a moment, he almost did not.

How would a child born of their indecent love grow? What would be the shape of his face, the color of his eyes or the slope of his nose? What changes would such a creature make in her? Would he be her first?

Back, now, in the midst of a world so real it certainly could not be, André settled down into the space beside her, the memory of the warmth of her still fresh against his skin. His head pressed against the pillows, and he brought his hand to her face to brush back a strand of hair that had fallen across her brow.

Had she any children? Why was it that he did not know if she did?

Why did he care?

Her face was aglow with a lovely light, and he gazed upon it with eyes made wide by a boundless wonder. A murmur, so light it was but a whisper, fell softly from his lips, and he realized not what he had said until the thought had already settled in the golden air that rested between them.

“_Tu me manquais. Ma chérie…je t’aime_.”

She shifted, and her eyes moved to meet his. The curve of her lips widened, and for a moment, something light and familiar began to rise in his chest. He knew not what it was, or perhaps he was too awful a coward to risk giving it a name.

“_Pardon_?” she hummed, her smile smooth and amicable.

Her tone was not unkind or spiteful, but it prompted a coldness to spread throughout his chest, dulling the sensation that had begun rising to his throat. The line of his mouth tightened, but he managed, all the same, to smile.

“I shall consider your concerns, my dear,” he replied softly.

A pleasant delight spilled out across the planes of her face, but the joy did little to warm the ache of such a bitter chill. “Ah, thank you, love.” She glanced to the side, her smile still bright. “I shall sleep quite soundly, now.”

_And I shan’t_.

* * *

**ᴛʜᴇ ᴇɴᴛʀᴇᴘʀᴇɴᴇᴜʀ.**


	3. ALOYSIUS

**warning:** language

**ᴛᴀꜱᴛᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ꜰʀᴜɪᴛ**

* * *

**_A SWEETNESS SO SUGARY IT WAS NEARLY SOUR _**coated the flesh of Aloysius’s gums, soaking the skin of his tongue and teeth with its eager, saccharine taste. When he arrived thereupon the land of his dear friend’s estate, he nearly lept free of his carriage, his flesh and muscles flush with all the eagerness of an impatient child. Not even the late autumn chill, chasing as it oft did after the midday breeze, could frighten away the warmth of his zealous thirst, blazing so fervently as it did in the cage of his ribs.

The soles of his formal shoes kissed the cold stones of Lord André Dupont’s driveway, but his head was raised far too high to dip to spy where his feet had landed. His gaze soared skyward, to the glorious heavens, rolling in smooth sheets of sapphire silk and pearly embroidery. The sun, happily dressed in a coat so fine and brilliant, smiled upon the earth with a warmth reminiscent of spring, and the heat mingled pleasantly with the flame blazing in the depths of Aloysius’s chest.

The curve of his lips was widening, and a breath, so great it caused his shoulders to rise, filled his prickling lungs. “What a lovely sky.” The sweetness coating the skin of his tongue bled into his voice and dusted his words, and the sugary sound colored the air about him in shades of golden honey. “Looks almost like spring, doesn’t it?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Aloysius caught his driver nodding, agreeing with a budding smile. “It does indeed, m’lord,” the man replied. “‘S’too bad the sun’s not here to stay.”

A chuckle, as light and bubbly as foam, caught in the back of his throat, and he eyed the driver knowingly. “A shame it is indeed,” he agreed, his tone as ambivalent as his eyes were bright. The line of his smile did not waver, but his fingers curled themselves tighter about the handle of his briefcase, recalling with a faintness both his goal and duty. “But now I’m afraid I must bid you _adieu_. The well of André’s patience has an unfortunate tendency to run dry, and on this occasion, I’m quite eager to keep him in the most agreeable of spirits.”

A dark-colored firmness flickered briefly in the carriage driver’s eyes at the mention of the head of the Dupont House, and without hesitating, the man nodded his head once more, his fingers moving to tighten their grip on the reins of his horses. “That man is many things,” he began, the line of his lips thinning beneath the weight of a hard frown, “but he sure as Hell ain’t patient.” He settled back into his chair, his gaze fleeing briefly to the side before resting again on Aloysius. “Best of luck to you.”

“Why thank you,” Aloysius began to turn from the carriage and its amicable driver, his gaze moving to fall on the familiar face of his friend’s grand manor house, “and to you as well.”

He heard the carriage move, pulled away by two strong, obedient horses, but the noise was quick to fade. A building sound was worming its way into his head: a growing rumble, curling like dark smoke up from the flames of bright-colored ambition burning in the cage of his chest.

The best of luck had indeed been with him. He was lucky to have received André’s letter, and even luckier still was he to have been so readily available when acquiring it, so free to choose to accede to his friend’s appeal. Adversity and misfortune had yet to adulterate or interrupt such a marvelous stretch of luck, and that alone was an incredibly outrageous gift in and of itself.

He would have been an ass to squander it, but perhaps he only proved himself a greater fool for supposing that even an extraordinary stretch of luck might guarantee him success in his present endeavor. In matters of impatience, familiarity might gladly move to remedy, but there was little friendly obligation could do to amend an absence of largesse, and in generosity, André had always been lacking.

In matters of frugality, however, he was ever bountiful.

“How do you do?” Aloysius offered the words with a smile, one as agreeable and delightful as the sun was warm. He turned it upon the footman waiting to grab the door for him, and despite how it clawed and whined, he did not let it slip from his face and into the paws of the dim unease that had begun to creep up from the pit of his stomach.

The young servant bowed his head and let a short but not unfriendly reply roll off his tongue, “Quite fine, Lord Lowe. And you?”

The door opened without complaint, and Aloysius offered the servant a winsome grin before stepping inside and handing off his cloak and hat to the man. “As fine as ever, thank you.”

The servant nodded curtly. “Master Dupont is waiting for you in his study.”

Something—a dark, hideous thing—suddenly made to grab for Aloysius’s lips. It tried to wrap its gnarled fingers about the curve of his smile, to weigh it down like a heavy sack of sand, but Aloysius knew better. He knew to suppose that it would attempt to embitter his grin; he knew better than to hope that André might care enough to receive his friends in warm, immaterial spaces.

Still, a tightness seeped into the line of his mouth, darkening for a moment the lightness that colored his face. The firmness embittered the sugary sweetness that brightened the confines of his chest and left his tongue reeling from the harshness of its sour taste, but the excitement pounding just behind his ribcage was too potent to be diluted by such bitterness. “Ah, thank you.”

The servant turned to put away the clothing Aloysius had handed off to him, but the lord himself was already moving away, heading with a growing alacrity toward André’s study. He knew the path well enough; years of friendship and service could bring about quite a comfortable sort of familiarity with a home that wasn’t one’s own.

Aloysius reached the door to André’s study with little hassle, his feet hastened by a burning anticipation. The polished wood, smooth and firm, stood nearly closed; only a sliver of space separated it from its frame, but a sliver was still a door ajar, and a door ajar was an invitation that habit couldn’t refuse.

He entered after a short set of knocks, pushing his way into the room without warning or hesitation. As he crossed the threshold, his chest swelled with sweet air, and the warmth in his throat came trickling back. “Hello and good afternoon.” He announced the words with a prideful and cheerful excitement, the bounce in his feet bleeding into the tone of his voice.

His eyes roamed about the room like free spirits, falling first upon the far window and its view of the distant hills and pale sky, and then second upon the face of the man whose work he had likely just disrupted. He wandered over to the man, a budding smile warming his face. “I see the room hasn’t changed much. Still not one for decoration, hmn?”

André’s eyes were at first narrowed, and he stared pointedly back from behind his desk, his hand and quill poised above one of the papers laid out before him. Then the warmth of familiarity flashed in his gaze, quick and hot, softening the sharpness in his dark eyes. “I haven’t much use for decor,” he put his quill down and began grabbing the papers he’d set upon the surface of his desk, shuffling and organizing them into neat stacks, “it proves itself quite inefficient in most cases.”

“Does it now?” Aloysius grabbed a nearby chair, brought it closer to André’s desk, and then set his briefcase down beside it. Eagerness buzzed beneath his skin, and his fingers, now free, ran wild across the top of the chair’s back like it was the keys of a piano. They drummed a quick nonsense rhythm into the dark leather, and the sound was both impatient and unsure. “I would think it might _improve _efficiency. Empty rooms are terrible eyesores, and that which is lovely to the eye is easy to pursue.”

A snort fell from André’s lips, and a jaded color came to darken his eyes. “You’ve never had a wife,” he replied. There was a joking hint to his words, but a flatness colored his voice, and the curve of his mouth was tight and firm.

Something that might have been a laugh ripped itself free of Aloysius’s throat. The drumming of his fingers grew harder and sharper and then, without warning, he grabbed the back of the chair. “Indeed, I haven’t.” His smile did not tighten, but he pressed his fingers into the dark leather, deeper and deeper until he suddenly let go of the chair entirely. “But you didn’t send for me just to complain in person, did you?” He gave the chair another pat and then began to move away from it, toward André. “How’ve you been, old chap? Eating well?”

André’s eyes followed Aloysius, watching first his face and then his hands when they moved to touch the objects sitting atop the desk. “I’ve been well enough,” a thought flashed across André’s face, and the line of his mouth softened, “though I suppose now especially so.”

“Oh?” Aloysius tapped at the wax stamper set atop André’s desk, and he glanced briefly at the stack of papers André had set aside. Numbers and mathematics. Finances?

“Yes,” André gaze moved back to Aloysius’s face, “Which brings me to that letter I sent you.”

The excitement in Aloysius’s chest suddenly flared a hot, blazing white. He tapped the wax stamper once more and then took it in his hand. The tips of his fingers burned like he had set them against a stove, and the eagerness was pounding at his ribcage, pressing so tightly it touched his flesh. “Ah, yes. _That_.” Aloysius moved away from the front of the desk, toward the window behind André, where he could peer out at the path that had taken him here. “I brought a copy of the old papers,” he began, “and a few working drafts for the new contract.”

“That’s splendid,” André replied. Real delight, bright and agreeable, colored his words. “Truly splendid. We shouldn’t have much issue finalizing it, then.”

The heat in Aloysius’s chest leaped suddenly for his mouth, but he swallowed to keep it from his tongue. Impatience did not breed compromise. “We shouldn’t, no,” he replied slowly. He fingered the wax stamper in his hand, running the tips of fingers over the design engraved into it. “Which is why I’d like to…_suggest_ to you a—another condition…for the new contract. One that _was not_ mentioned in your letter, but I believe to be quite beneficial to all parties involved.”

There was a pause at first. He heard the rustle of paper come from where André sat, but he did not turn around. His eyes were glued to the window. Behind its cool glass stretched a wide, open world: a sky, pale and soaring, crisscrossed by towering gray and white clouds, and centered by a brilliant, blazing sun. Yet his eyes were caught on the faded reflection hidden in the glass, the peering, eager eyes and messy hair. 

They were all his own, but then he blinked, and another’s came to sit just beside them. It was a woman’s—_the_ woman’s. In the reflection, her dim eyes stared back unblinkingly at his own, and though the apples of her cheeks shone with the warmth of a smile, the line of her mouth was as tight as the grip of a python.

If he could simply be allotted the chance to pull her free—

If André would only allow him a _taste_—

Then he blinked, and she was gone.

Finally, André’s voice weaved its way across the room, coiling like a serpent in the empty air. “What sort of condition?” His tone was harder; Aloysius could hear the frown in the man’s voice, tightening his words like a vise. Yet there still lingered a question in his tone, an opportunity gleaming in the wolf’s teeth.

The eagerness hummed in the tips of Aloysius’s fingers, and he wound them tightly about the wax stamper in his hands. “It’s nothing deleterious, old chap.” He stared into the eyes peering back at him in the dim reflection, scrutinized them as harshly as he could, but they were his own, and they did little but stare back at him. “It’s merely another compromise. A…distribution of sorts.”

This time, André did not pause before responding, but his voice was still hard and skeptical. “A distribution of _what_?”

Aloysius tapped a finger against the side of the wax stamper. The polished wood had become warm, but the tips of his fingers were beginning to cool.

The words had already come into his mind; he had gone over them so frequently during the trip, trimming and polishing their vowels and consonants until they rang with an almost heavenly tune: the perfect tone with which to give voice to his desires. They waited now, at the back of his tongue, impatiently shuffling back and forth amongst one another, yet he dared not let them slip from his mouth just yet. He could risk biding his time.

“Not what, old friend, but _who_,” he replied.

At first, silence as thick as wax was all that met Aloysius’s response, but then André echoed, in a voice tight and low, “_Who_?”

Aloysius nodded and then swallowed, and the eagerness lept for the tip of his tongue. “Yes. You see, what I’m proposing is a—”

“No.” The response cut through Aloysius’s words like a bullet: sudden and sharp and cold. He felt it find a home in the back of his skull, digging through flesh and bone until it tore through the tender tissues of his brain.

His gaze tore free of the window as he whirled around, and the room and its sparse decor blurred until his eyes found the back of André’s chair. “Pardon?” he inquired. Was André being serious? Was the suggestion so foul that he did not want to even _hear _it? “My apologies, but I believe I might’ve heard you incorrectly, old chap.”

“I said no,” André repeated. His voice had not loudened, but the sharpness of his tone gave it a harsher edge. “I do not find your suggestion beneficial. Expunge it immediately from your drafts.” His voice grew colder, and the chill devoured the warmth in the room like snow atop a fallen body. “And would you kindly put my stamper back where it belongs?”

The excitement in Aloysius’s chest fought back against the growing chill, snapping and biting at it like a feral dog. “‘No’?” he echoed. The eagerness was roaring in his head, shouting like a wild fire in the space just behind his eyes, and the taste it left on his tongue was sour and bitter. “How can you negate it? You offered me no opportunity to explain.”

“I have no need for explanation.” The mess of noise in Aloysius’s ears muffled André’s voice, but he still heard the man’s words: how cold and harsh and unforgiving they were. “Now expunge any and all hints of your proposal from the drafts and _kindly return my stamper_—”

“Why do you attack my proposal so viciously?” Aloysius interrupted. The heat had finally grabbed hold of his tongue, and now his mouth was hot, and his words burned from the fire. He moved toward André until he was beside him, and the man stood up when he advanced, papers and quill once more abandoned. “Do you not see all there is to _gain _from it? There will be greater financial freedom for you _both_. She won’t have to depend so completely upon you. You are _married_; when you die she will inherit _nothing_—”

“I will not permit you to prostitute her around like some common _whore_!” André’s voice had grown in terrible volume; it swelled like a river just before a flood: an awful surge of dark, frothing water. “She is _my_ courtesan and I will not allocate her out to others like a damn commodity—”

“Her commoditization was never my intention, but if you choose to keep her bound so tightly to you and you alone then she undoubtedly _will_ be—”

“—your argument is asinine and I’m now quite tired of humoring you—”

“—open your _goddamn_ _EARS_, André, and listen to what I’m trying to_ tell _you—”

“—return my_ fucking stamper _and shut your _goddamn MOUTH_.”

The silence was immediate. It coiled around the room like a great python, constricting and pressing viciously down upon its prey.

Aloysius’s shoulders rose and fell with the weight of his breaths, and his chest pressed back against the vise tightening about his body. His lungs burned with a terrible fire, and so too did his throat, as though he had poured molten iron down it, and when it cooled, it would sink, weighty and thick, to the bottom of his stomach.

He could not free her; selfishness was too strong a chain.

“I shan’t say it again,” André spoke slowly, deliberately, and his voice was low, dark growl, “put the stamper down and_ get out_.” His dark eyes were narrowed to vicious slits, and a dangerous, warning light glowed from deep within them.

The brightness was familiar; it was one Aloysius knew all too well. He’d often see such vicious light in the eyes of the man he had been taught to call father. Back then the brightness had been terrifying and cruel, and though fear it no longer elicited, the look which now sat in the eyes of the man he called friend promised much of the same.

Without a word, he placed the stamper back down upon the man’s desk. The python stretched and pressed with a heavy weight, but Aloysius did not push back against it. He merely grabbed his briefcase and left. The warmth in his chest was cooling, and the sour taste lingering in his mouth was but a fading remnant of desire too hot for mortal hands to hold.

The coldness crept slowly and surely into spaces that had once been warm, and the eagerness that had earlier lightened his steps left them now heavy and harsh. He made to retrace the route he had taken to André’s study, but as he turned a familiar corner, his eyes found the face of a woman. She was headed back the way he had just come, and though she held in her hands a tray laden with objects of consumption like a maid, the attire she sported was much too fine for an individual of such a class to afford.

The woman’s eyes widened when they met his, and hot surprise, followed quickly by something gone too suddenly for Aloysius to name it, flashed across her face. “Oh! What a surprise.” The woman’s voice was warm and sweet, but the chill stealing through his bones was too cold to be warmed by it. The affability of her tone was but a bitter reminder of that which he could not have. “I did not expect to see you here today, Mr. Lowe. Is Lord Dupont beset by some legal concern?”

Aloysius tried to grab at the remainders of lukewarm excitement curdling in the stomach, but his efforts left him mustering little more than a tired sigh. “I suppose one could determine such,” he replied. His tone was dull and colorless, and his words were as heavy as the frown that pulled at his lips.

The smile decorating the woman’s lips wavered, and Aloysius saw something bright and fervent gleam briefly in the depths of her watchful eyes. “You seem troubled, Al,” the nickname fell easily from the woman’s lips, but Aloysius did not perk at the sound of it like he often would have, “what’s eating at you?”

Many things, dear courtesan. Regret for a woman and a boy; pity for a son and his father. Want for things outside of that which can be controlled.

“Nothing that cannot be solved with time and work, Madam.” With all the energy he could muster, Aloysius forced a smile. He felt it pull at the line of his lips, stretching them into a painful, awkward shape. “But I’d like for you not to be plagued by the same troubles, so I advise that you leave André to his own devices for an hour or so. Our dialogue was quite…_impassioned_, and some residual heat may still linger.”

The woman shifted her hold on the tray in her hands, and in doing so caused the sleeve of her gown to be pushed back from her wrist. Aloysius caught a brief glance of the once covered skin, and perhaps it was simply his eyes playing tricks on him, but he thought perhaps he saw dark discoloration in the flesh: a bruise from too tight a grip.

Yet he’d seen such a mark on her skin once before. How often did one’s eyes lie twice?

“Ah yes, I was afraid of that.” The sleeve came back to cover her wrist, and Aloysius’s wandering eyes fled back to hers. “I’ve heard word that he was apparently being hounded with letters from a set of inventors: Hollis and Wells, I believe.” The woman’s frown deepened, but the gleam that appeared in her eyes was not as bright as before. “It must have been rather stressful for him.”

Aloysius tilted his head, and a cloudiness rose to dull his eyes. The names sounded familiar. “Hollis and Wells?” he echoed, the line of his mouth curling into a befuddled frown. “I believe I know of them; they’re in the textile industry.” His grip loosened somewhat on the handle of his briefcase, and he tapped the tip of a finger against the leather. “Last I heard of them they were still attempting to garner a patent.”

“Textiles?” Something bright and hot flashed in the woman’s eyes. The light warming the panes of her face seemed to shift, and the line of her mouth tightened briefly before softening back into the curve of a frown. Her gaze fled down to the tray in her hands, and her fingers tightened about the handles. “Oh dear, I’m afraid I must get going; the soup’s getting cold.” Her lips curled into an apologetic smile, and her eyes moved to meet Aloysius’s once more. “It was a pleasure talking with you, Al. You should visit more often.”

He nodded his head and tried to mimic the woman’s smile, but the grin he managed was just as poor as the last. “I wish that I could.” A raw, painful honesty ripped itself free of his throat to color the words, and the line of his lips trembled from the ache of it.

Something bright and thick swelled in the woman’s eyes: concern, or perhaps pity. Aloysius would not dare to call it by any other name. It was not love; it would never be love. There was only one man who had ever been so lucky as to receive such, and those proud enough to think themselves to be him were not, nor would they ever be.

Yet there was one shining detail of knowledge that made such pessimistic insight bearable.

“Good day to you, Al.”

André was not the man.

“And to you as well, [Name].”

And neither was her husband.

* * *

**ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴀᴡʏᴇʀ.**


	4. HADLEY

**warning:** minor language 

**ᴛᴏᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ʟɪɴᴇ**

* * *

**_THE RED-COLORED BUZZ HUMMING LIKE A SWARM OF FURIOUS WASPS_ **in Hadley’s head came from his teeth. They chattered like a pair of gossiping wives, clattering angrily against one another in tandem with the rattling and jerking of the small black cab Fraser had hired.

The sky with her clouds of white and gray and the sloping, rolling land blended into a confusing haze that tugged uncomfortably at the pit of Hadley’s stomach, and so, for the better part of the journey, he kept his eyes screwed shut so tightly that blood-colored stars bloomed in bright patterns behind them. A cold, prickling fear had already found itself a home in the coil of his intestines, and the furious jerking and rattling and shaking of the carriage only bolstered its choking grip.

Perhaps he should have coughed up the money for a cab that did not take to the roads like a hobbling drunk.

“Everything alright, Hadley?” Fraser inquired. His voice was just loud enough to force its way past the deafening buzz ringing in Hadley’s ears, and when they trickled into his head, they bobbed like light-colored buoys, floating on the concern that had warmed Fraser’s tone as though it were a personal wave. “You look a bit pale.”

The prickling stars that brightened the darkness behind Hadley’s eyelids flickered and throbbed, and their sharp, sparkling points pressed dully at his temples. “I’m…f-f-fine,” his eyebrows drew together, and the skin of his forehead creased like bunched fabric, “j-ju-j-just a bit of a h-head—headache.” His voice was tight and firm, like the slant of his brows, and when the words escaped the jerking spasms of his unruly tongue, they fell blunt and harsh from his frowning lips. “Are we n-nearly th-there—there?”

As though to answer his inquiry, the cab came to a jerking halt, and the flat voice of the cabdriver pressed through the buzz ringing in Hadley’s ears, “Here you are, gentlemen.” 

Without the haphazard jerkings of the cab to rattle Hadley’s teeth, the chattering hum began to quiet, and with it went the prickling stars and their stinging needle points. In their stead Lord Dupont’s illustrious manor rose: pale bricks and pointed roofs, spilling out across land colored gold and amber by autumn’s cool brush.

Fraser disembarked from the cab in one neat, fluid motion before moving to pay the driver, and Hadley tossed himself less aptly out after his companion, his briefcase in hand. The earth in her autumn shades spun and whirled like a Spanish dancer, tossing and leaping up into the arms of the pale and waiting sky, but Hadley’s hand found the edge of the cab before the earth in all her rich colors could upend herself. He quieted the world’s exuberant pirouettes and leaps, and by the time it had steadied and settled back into its comfortable place Fraser had returned.

Fraser shouted something to the cab driver—a call of thanks, no doubt—and then Hadley felt the man’s hand on his shoulder, his fingers, digging into the fabric of his fine coat. “Come on, Hadley,” Fraser chirped. His voice was light and loud, a shard of sunshine falling from his smiling lips, and he offered Hadley a friendly pat on the back, a hopeful encouragement to coax him forward toward the manor house looming like a tall mountain before them. “Destiny awaits.”

Something like a wince tried to curl Hadley’s spine, and though he stood firm against it, a shiver, light but telling, still wracked his shoulders. “D-D-Don’t—don’t get ahead o-o-of your-s-self.”

He let his hand fall from the cab. An ache pulsed in his fingers and palm, buzzing in his hands just as loudly as the jolting of the cheap cab had hummed in his head, but the pain paled in the light of the terrible rotting fear boiling and burning in the acid of his stomach. He felt it growing; he sensed how it moved, shifting and wriggling like a fat worm in its efforts to escape the shadow of Lord Dupont’s home. “L-Let’s—let’s get this o-o-over with.”

He started forward, the line of his mouth firm in spite of the fanged teeth gnawing at his gut, and Fraser fell into step beside him. They moved across the gravel driveway and up the manor steps, into the cold and impersonal arms of the building’s impressive shadow.

Once they were upon the doorstep, Fraser grabbed the brass knocker. It was an ornate thing, nicer than most. Its ring was a mass of coiling vines and veiny leaves, all of which sprouted from some space behind the delicate, feathery wings of a rosy-cheeked cherub. The angel’s hands were empty and its arms were folded, closed off like the door upon which it was fixed.

Fraser knocked three times and then stood back, and Hadley waited quietly beside him, his eyes fixed upon the brass knocker and its watchful angel. As the silence stretched, the cherub observed them; its large, child-like eyes stared back into Hadley’s own, but no warmth permeated that young, brass gaze. Instead, it was a cold and metallic indifference that had made its home in the cherub’s steady eyes, an aloof, unfeeling cruelty cast from on high.

Then the door was opened, and the cherub and its cool gaze disappeared. In its stead stood a man, a servant, who eyed Fraser and Hadley first and addressed them both second. The servant's gaze swept up and down their persons, but his stare lingered scrutinizingly on the manner of their dress, and when he spoke, his voice was as dry and dull as the dead leaves scattered across the lawn.

“Hello,” the servant’s eyes rose finally to meet their own, but the look that sat there was as inviting as his tone, as cold as the gaze of Lord Dupont’s brass cherub, “What business might you gentlemen have?”

Hadley’s eyes fled immediately to his companion, and he watched Fraser step forward. “We’re here to see the master of the house—Lord André Dupont,” Fraser replied. He spoke lightly, his voice and tongue firm with a confidence that Hadley could only hope to mimic. “We have an appointment,” and then, as though he worried the servant might doubt his explanation, he added, “Fraser Hollis and Hadley Wells?”

Recognition flickered in the servant’s dull eyes, and his gaze shifted briefly to the briefcase Hadley clutched. “Ah,” he nodded affirmatively and then moved to the side to allow them entrance to his master’s manor, “Of course.”

Hadley waited for Fraser to enter before following after him, and once they had both crossed the threshold, the servant shut the door. Though now inside and free of the bitter wind, a frigid chill was seeping into Hadley’s skin, digging its way through his flesh and muscles until it could settle in his bones. It was a strange, biting cold: manufactured and uncomfortable, lacking in the refreshing breath of the mid-autumn breeze.

Hadley fought the shiver tip-toeing up his spine, and despite his better nature, his eyes moved from the servant to spare a glance about the foyer. The floor was made of pale marble and dark granite, both polished so vigorously that he could make out the finer details of his reflection in its glossy surface with undisputed ease. Elegance, exquisite and fine, oozed from the room’s corners and pockets, and the splendor circled him like a guard dog, a loyal purebred, lashing its braided tail and baring its polished teeth.

Against the elegant stone tiles, his finest shoes seemed little more than poor, common mimicries of a more graceful refinement; a dirty, ugly baseness attempting, without success, to pass itself off as some noble, splendorous creature.

“Your coats and hats, gentlemen?” The servant’s voice pierced the terrible storm drowning Hadley’s thoughts, and his eyes moved quickly to meet the man’s. The servant still watched him and Fraser, but now beside the man another servant stood, a younger man, with eyes just as indifferent as the first.

“Ah, yes,” Fraser moved to divest himself of his coat and hat, and Hadley followed his lead, “here you are. Thank you.”

Neither servant made to reply to Fraser’s thanks. The younger man simply took their things and then, without a word, moved off, and the servant who had let Hadley and Fraser into Lord Dupont’s manor began to turn away.

“Right this way,” the man said to them, his tone clipped and curt.

Without the comfort of his coat, the chill infecting the manor poured unadulterated and thick over Hadley. It soaked him and pooled in his stomach, feeding the wriggling fear that lay there, restless and eager.

Hadley glanced at his friend, and Fraser returned his look. A brilliant enthusiasm shone in Fraser’s blue eyes, but beneath it, Hadley could see a dark uncertainty, a terrible fear, lingering like a hideous shadow just behind his friend’s bright excitement.

_This could be it._

It was really happening.

_What have we to lose?_

It was a miracle, a dream come true, and certainly too good to be such.

_We’ll be rich, Hadley. As rich as kings._

A breath, deep and yet frail, filled Hadley’s lungs. He swallowed, and then, attempting as best he could to tame his wild tongue and unruly teeth, he said to Fraser, in a tone colored by false humor, “After you.”

In response, the smile curling the line of Fraser’s mouth widened, and a short, familiar chuckle fell from his lips. The shadow of his enthusiasm dimmed, and in its absence, his eagerness glimmered with a sharper brightness. “Why, thank you, kind sir.”

They followed the servant up a set of grand wooden stairs covered by a lush amber and chocolate-brown runner and then down a hall embellished with trimmings and decor Hadley had only ever gazed upon in dreams. The embellishments bled refinement, and upon the lacquered floor the shimmering splendor gathered, pooling into effervescent puddles deep enough to drown a man.

Yet the dog had followed them, and when Hadley’s eyes lingered upon an ivory vase or oil painting, a low growl would bubble up from the back of its throat, and its gums would peel back from its shiny teeth. Lingering eyes were not welcome in the homes of nobles, especially if it was a commoner to which such a gaze belonged.

“My lord?” Hadley heard the servant call. The man had stopped beside a closed door, one hand raised and the other poised to grab the knob.

A short silence passed, and the ugly doubt broiling in Hadley’s stomach gnawed at a patch of tender flesh just beneath his spine. His fingers curled tighter about the handle of his briefcase, and from the corner of his eye, he saw the purebred’s ears flatten against its head, its polished teeth gleaming with an unnatural, glossy sheen.

Then a reply, muffled and curt, came from behind the door. “Yes?”

“Misters Hollis and Wells have arrived, my lord,” the servant answered. “They are here now to see you.”

This time there was no pause, and Hadley heard Lord Dupont reply, in a tone just as curt as before, “Let them in.”

Without hesitating, the servant opened the door and then stepped aside. Fraser entered first and Hadley followed, and in his ears the low growl of the purebred hummed in warning: a threat so familiar it called itself kin.

His eyes were drawn first to a window, wide and paned and cupped by twin curtains. Clear sunlight spilled through the glass, engulfing the study in a strange, empty light. No comforting heat poured forth from the shards of sharp illumination, and when Hadley’s eyes fell to the lord seated at the oaken desk, whatever warmth still lingered in his bones fled.

The shape of Lord Dupont’s face was as sharp and hard as the look in his dark eyes, and upon his thin lips sat a frown so firm and deep that a sculptor must have carved it straight from stone. His cheeks and eyes were sunken, hollow, as though his skin was little more than a piece of gossamer fabric stretched across his skull, and at his temples the dark locks of his curling hair had begun to gray, fading into a dull, tarnished silver. A pince-nez clutched the bridge of his thin nose, and in front of him sat a piece of parchment paper, upon which he had already written a long, sprawling paragraph.

“Thank you, Arthur,” Lord Dupont began. His tone was hard and curt, clipped, as though his voice had been purged of all feeling, and when the words fell from Lord Dupont’s frowning lips, the fear worming about restlessly in Hadley’s gut fell suddenly still. Perhaps the dream was true; perhaps he had no reason to worry. “You may shut the door, but kindly wait outside; I’ll need you in a moment.”

“Of course, my lord,” the servant replied. Hadley heard the door shut shortly thereafter, and though a warmth was growing in his chest, the purebred’s growl still seeped through the wood, and in the back of Hadley’s head, it found itself a home.

Fraser immediately moved to greet the lord, his hand quickly rising and the line of his mouth curling into an eager and optimistic curve. “Thank you for being so kind as to agree to see us, Lord Dupont—”

“Please find yourselves a seat.” Lord Dupont’s clinical tone cut sharply through Fraser’s fervent and unfinished thanks, and without sparing Hadley nor his friend another glance, the lord turned his unfeeling eyes upon the paper set before him.

The chill in the room grew, and its cold teeth bit at Hadley’s flesh and clothes. He thought he saw something flash across the planes of Fraser’s familiar face, but whatever shadow he might’ve believed to have glimpsed disappeared as quickly as it had come, and when he blinked Fraser was already moving to grab the nearest chair. Hadley did the same, and by the time he was perched upon a plush velvet seat, Fraser was again offering Lord Dupont an amiable, undaunted grin.

“On the behalf of my partner and myself, I thank you for extending to us this wonderful kindness,” Fraser began, his warm voice nipping at the heels of what little cold it could pursue, “This meeting is precisely what my partner and I have been waiting for, and I’d like to assure you now that your generosity is not, by any means, misplaced.”

Though Fraser spoke directly to him, Lord Dupont’s dark gaze did not rise from his writing. He continued along as though Fraser and Hadley weren’t even there, and it was only when Fraser had finished explaining his and Hadley’s reasons for seeking a meeting with him that the lord finally spoke.

“Are you quite done?”

Fraser paused, and Hadley felt something in the pit of his stomach abruptly tighten. He saw the light in his friend’s bright blue eyes suddenly go terribly dark before flickering just as quickly back to life—a sputter, a small bump along an otherwise smooth and even road. “I beg your pardon?”

Lord Dupont set down his quill and then, after moving aside his paper to allow the ink time to dry, his gaze lifted to meet Fraser’s. None of the kindness which Fraser had earlier attributed to the lord shone in the depths of those sharp, dark eyes. No warmth, no feeling or sympathy.

No heart; no humanity.

“I asked if you were finished,” Lord Dupont replied, his voice and words falling as flat as the marble floor of the manor’s foyer, “for I certainly am.”

The fear sitting in the pit of Hadley’s stomach grew suddenly heavy, and he turned to Fraser, whose bright smile stood strong beneath the cover of ignorance. How stupid they were, how painfully gullible, to believe so important a man had desired to associate with them and their invention. He should stop Fraser; he should divest his friend of his childish naïveté before the lord made an even greater ass of them.

“F-F-Fraser—” Hadley started quietly, his eyes fleeing to Fraser’s.

Yet his friend did not hear his plea and instead made to echo Lord Dupont’s cruel reply, “Finished?”

“Yes.” Lord Dupont’s sharp, unfeeling eyes narrowed, and when he spoke, his words took upon the bitter edge of his frown. “Finished, done, exhausted—pick any synonym you like, Mr. Wells; I am done with my work and, frankly, quite exhausted with the two of you. This…‘_meeting_’—or whatever it is you wish to call it—is over. Goodbye.”

Fraser’s smile wavered, his lips quivering beneath the pressing weight of a growing frown. “But we—we’ve hardly discussed anything at all.” Then a thought came to Fraser’s mind, and he added, in a tone that was too soft to be pointed, “And pardon me, Lord Dupont, but I’m afraid you have confused my associate and I: the name is Hollis, my lord. Fraser Hollis. Wells is my partner.”

Lord Dupont’s dark, sunken eyes did not move from Fraser’s face, and his chilling glare managed still to burn Hadley, to cut into his common flesh in a manner inherent to all noblemen. The frown decorating the lord’s lips had deepened, and Hadley caught something flicker in the man’s dark eyes: annoyance, bristling and hot.

“Allow me to be frank, Mr. Wells, for I doubt your skull is thin enough to allow for the comprehension of thoughts expressed by any other means,” Lord Dupont began slowly. His teeth flashed beneath the pink of his gums, and his pearly whites were as sharp as a dog’s. “I thought I had made my disinterest in your product quite plain, but in case I have inadvertently managed once more to underestimate the degree to which your ignorance abounds, I tell you now, in words as plain as the day itself: I did not send for the two of you out of some curious interest in whatever good it is you wish to sell me. I have no interest in, nor will I ever harbor any care for you or your associate’s designs

“Your letters, Mr. Wells, were quite adept at squashing such curiosity, if indeed it was ever initially harbored,” Lord Dupont continued flatly. “Now I hope my intentions have been made sufficiently clear.” The lord’s unkind eyes then moved to the door, and without allowing for a moment of pause, he called out curtly, “Arthur, kindly show these two gentlemen the door.”

Somewhere behind Hadley, the door opened. He heard the deadbolt slide out of place; he could not deafen himself to the servant’s cursory reply, his answer, clipped and obedient and as empty as the space where Hadley’s lungs had once resided. He felt himself stand, and he saw his surroundings shift as his head moved, but then his eyes snagged upon his friend’s figure, and his body stilled.

Fraser had not moved; he sat rooted to his chair, his fingers wrapped so tightly about the armrests that a sickly, bone-white paleness had stolen into the skin of his knuckles. His blue eyes were wide, but all light had vanished from them; now they were little more than two tarnished coins, two broken panes of dirty glass. “But—Lord Dupont, we—”

Hadley felt his hand move, and before he could stop himself, he was grabbing Fraser’s shoulder. Words swelled behind his teeth, and his lips and tongue moved in a manner too unified to be usual. “Fraser.”

The man’s eyes fled to Hadley’s own, and therein Hadley saw a terrible paleness, an emptiness so dark and hollow it had spilled out into the planes of Fraser’s face. Something there had fallen, and now it lay broken, crumbling into pitiful, ruinous pieces.

Hadley squeezed his friend’s shoulder, and then his gaze shifted briefly to Lord Dupont. The nobleman’s sharp, unfeeling eyes had already fallen; his interest had shifted, and Hadley watched the lord busy himself with sealing up the letter he had written.

Something in the pit of Hadley’s stomach turned. He felt it shift and pull itself free of the gaping hole ruining his chest. It was an ugly thing, and it pulled his unwieldy lips into an unfriendly shape.

“G-G-Goo—Good day to you, Lord Du—D-Dupont.” Hadley spit the words like they were a terrible, bitter venom, and then he turned to the servant, the obedient blob he’d mistaken for a man.

The servant did not wince beneath the heat of Hadley’s glare; he met the man’s stare head-on, his gaze as flat as his master’s. “This way, gentlemen.”

Hadley drew his hand from Fraser’s shoulder and stepped back to allow his friend room to stand. Fraser moved slowly, as though the air had become somehow thicker following Lord Dupont’s monologue, but once he was standing, Hadley pressed a hand to his back, and together they followed the servant out of the nobleman’s study.

The servant led them back the way they had come, but the gaudy decorations embellishing the hallways and stairs did not pull at Hadley’s eyes. Now he kept his gaze down and focused upon his friend’s lowered head. A grayness clouded Fraser’s gaze, and the sight prodded at the strange, venomous spike digging at Hadley’s spine.

How could a man be so unsympathetic, so cruel?

“Arthur!” a new voice called out suddenly, tearing Hadley’s gaze from Fraser’s fallen visage.

His eyes found a woman’s face, a noblewoman’s, if the composition of her dress was to be trusted. She bore a comforting smile, one that curled her lips into a delicate shape and pressed at the bottoms of her eyes, and from her dark pupils spilled a warmth as vibrant as sunlight, yet tenderness in the eyes of the nobility was never unfounded, that, many a nobleman had proven true.

“Arthur, I was—oh!” the woman was saying. She had at first approached the servant eagerly, and as she’d drawn closer, the warmth that radiated from her smile had begun to seep into Hadley’s flesh, but then her eyes had caught briefly upon his own, and the comfort of her grin had flickered beneath the quick shadow of surprise.

The servant paused, and Hadley thought he saw something briefly flash in the man’s flat gaze. “Yes, madam?”

“My apologies, Arthur,” the edges of the woman’s smile pressed again into the apples of her cheeks, but Hadley saw her gloved hands moving, smoothing fabric that wasn’t ruffled. “I was under the impression that you were not…_preoccupied_.”

The servant offered Hadley and Fraser little more than a cursory glance before replying, “No worries, madam—I was simply escorting these two gentlemen to the door; I shall be available shortly.”

The noblewoman’s eyes then fled once more to Hadley and Fraser, and in them, Hadley saw something like recognition gleam. “Oh! You gentlemen must be Hollis and Wells, then,” she exclaimed, her warm gaze flickering between the two of them. Their names fell with unexpected sweetness from her lips, wrapped as they were in the soft colors of her smile. “Why are you hurrying these men off, Arthur? Can they not stay for tea?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Hadley saw Fraser’s head lift, perk up like a child’s at the noblewoman’s words. Tea? Shared in the company of Lord Dupont’s wife? For she must be his wife; who else could she be, dressed in such finery?

“We would love a cup of tea,” Fraser spoke up suddenly. A sort of eagerness had leaped into his voice, but then, just as quickly, he swallowed it.

The woman, however, only smiled. Her bright eyes pressed at the vicious spike digging into Hadley’s spine, softening its harsh shape until it was a smooth pole of clay.

Kindness, it seemed, was a luxury in which few could indulge.

Hadley saw something like a frown pull at the servant’s lips, but when the man spoke, he addressed the noblewoman alone. “My apologies, madam, but I’m afraid Lord Dupont desires that these men be escorted from the manor; he did not appear too thrilled to be subject to their company.”

The warmth in the noblewoman’s eyes flickered, and Hadley saw a shadow pass briefly across her face. Perhaps he had imagined it, for the comfort of her kind smile quickly brightened the features of her pleasant visage, but he thought to spy, for a moment, a shape suspiciously firm and strangely spiked gleaming beneath the softness that painted her face.

“Why, Arthur, love, you must be mistaken,” she replied delicately. Her voice was smooth: a soft coo, curling off her pink tongue. There was no firmness in her tone, no dubious sharpness or unusual hardness. “Kindly fetch these two men a cup of tea, will you? I’ll go see Lord Dupont myself; I’m sure this was all but a terrible miscommunication.”

The servant’s eyes flickered briefly to Hadley’s, and in that moment, quick as it was, the unfeeling flatness infecting the man’s gaze was blotted by a flash of hesitance. Then the servant blinked, and at once the grayness returned, strong and firm.

“Of course, madam,” the servant nodded his head to the noblewoman and then offered Hadley and Fraser a quick glance, “It appears your stay has been prolonged, gentlemen. Now if you’d kindly follow me…”

Fraser was quick to speak, and in his voice, Hadley could hear the beginnings of a hopeful smile, “We’d be delighted.”

The servant did not reply, but Hadley saw a sourness steal into the line of the man’s mouth. The servant led them then down a path with which they were unfamiliar, but as they passed the noblewoman, Hadley chanced a short glance her way.

Her face was young, perhaps too young to be wife to a man as far along in age as Lord Dupont appeared—to be a woman as old as Lady Dupont—and behind her eyes, nearly smothered by a disarming and comforting warmth, he glimpsed a curious emotion, one too strange to be named, if indeed he knew what to call it.

If not Lady Dupont, then who was she? What title granted her the power to challenge the decrees of a lord?

She caught his wandering eyes, and the line of her mouth curved into a smile too sweet to be true, and yet too honest to be doubted.

Should he trust it?

What did he have left to lose?

* * *

**ᴛʜᴇ ɪɴᴠᴇɴᴛᴏʀ.**


	5. FRASER

**warning:** language

**ꜱᴍᴇʟʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʀᴏꜱᴇꜱ**

* * *

**_THE PLEASANT CHATTER OF TOWNSFOLK _**buzzed in the late autumn air. With the growing chill their dialogue mingled, dulling the wind’s biting edge and warming the shells of Fraser’s ears. In the absence of familiar company, the heat made itself companion to his walk through the square, and by his side it lingered, warming his ears with its friendly conversation.

His eyes moved from house to house as he wandered, lingering for a brief moment or two on open shops and unfamiliar faces—on the townspeople, who went about their day with all the confidence of habit. They paid Fraser little heed as he meandered past them; the upkeep of their pleasant routines devoured their attention, and such rapacity left little to offer the stranger in their midst.

Perhaps they would have set aside a greater portion of their consideration if his companion were of flesh and bone—was not so incorporeal as speech or air—but Hadley had claimed a prior engagement, and the novelty of their most recent dwelling left few persons besides to petition. So Fraser wandered alone, and though not preferable to company, solitude was indeed palatable, if perhaps only for the ambiance offered by the townspeople’s chatter and goings-on.

The pleasant heat warming Fraser’s ears seeped into his head and pooled in his chest, and there it rested most agreeably, moving only to soften the line of his mouth or to offer a bounce to his unhurried gait. No thoughts moved to bother him; no worries attempted to cool the delightful warmth enveloping his mind—to cloud the pleasant clarity of his walk.

Why should they? Everything was going along so swimmingly, now—so _smoothly_. For despite his apparent reservations, Lord Dupont had scheduled a second meeting, and, albeit begrudgingly, he’d even allotted them a fraction of support—a sample of the benefits inherent to an association with the Dupont name. And what wonderful perks they were. What lovely advantages. It was of no matter that they were slim; they were still just as beneficial as any extensive gratuity.

So Fraser strolled along without concern, without the gloom of fear darkening the sunny morning—infecting its clear sky or casting into shadow its cheerful sun.

Then he saw her.

His wandering eyes found her unintentionally, in a glimpse so short it could hardly be called a glance. Yet enough of her face had been spied in so coincidental and brief a look—enough for recognition to snag upon, to draw into its thin, careful fingers and examine.

_Might that be…her?_

She was standing beside a stall brimming with autumnal flowers: bunches of pale iberis and golden alyssums, their delicate petals reaching out eagerly from the buckets and baskets into which they had been set. Her dress was not as fine as the noblewoman’s from Lord Dupont’s manor, and her head was turned to look upon the bright assortments spilling out to greet her, but a strange familiarity colored what little of her face Fraser managed to glimpse.

Perhaps it had been something in the line of her jaw, or the fraction of her nose or cheek not hidden by the turn of her face. It was a look, a similarity so akin to the noblewoman’s that it grabbed at his feet and tugged at his head, and his eyes fled again to her face before he could think to stop them.

_It must be._

When his eyes finally fixed themselves upon her, a cab came almost immediately to block his view, but by then his legs were already moving. They carried him across the road, around the cab, and past the people meandering about the street, and they did not pause until he was just behind her, where the distance between them could no longer muddy his view.

“My, what a surprise!” The words bounded past his teeth and lips with all the exuberance and grace of a dancer, and from his tongue it leaped, eager to fall upon the woman’s waiting ears. Something hot and bright and sun-colored was pressing at his chest: excitement, or some lesser-known twin. “Hello again, Madam.”

Though his greeting had been embellished with only the brightest and friendliest of colors, the woman started at the sound of his voice, and she quickly turned to face him, her eyes as wide as a nobleman’s dinner plates. Her gaze fled to him with surprising speed, and the shock that brightened it was a color so vibrant it was nearly blinding. The gaudy hue spilled out readily from her pupils and pooled in the flesh of her cheeks, but, for a moment, Fraser thought he saw a darker color settle there, in the planes of her face—something the color of tar. The shadow seeped like ink from her wide, watchful eyes and glimmered darkly behind the light of her surprise, and its shade was nearly that of fear, of a worry made real. But the shadow was gone before he could ascertain its true nature, if indeed it had ever lingered in her skin, and a warm relief quickly scrubbed away the surprise pooling in the flesh of her cheeks.

“Oh!” A smile began to tug at the line of her mouth, but the curve was thin and uncertain—hesitant, as though it knew not yet its purpose, its reason for being. “Why, h-hello.” The light brightening her eyes flickered, and she brought one of her hands to her chest. She spoke tentatively, her words made soft by a hesitance not at all like the certainty that had colored her voice when he’d first made her acquaintance. “You, ah, you certainly gave me a bit of—a bit of a fright there, mister…”

Her voice began to trail off, but the ends of her statement still hung in the air, fraying like unfinished cloth.

Fraser’s smile dimmed, and the warmth hugging his chest flickered in the chill of a ghostly wind. Had she forgotten him? Had the memory of the aid she’d given him and Hadley been banished from her mind?

Or was he mistaken? Was this not at all the noblewoman from Lord Dupont’s manor? This woman was indeed dressed quite differently, but attire was certainly a changeable facet; a face, on the other hand, was certainly not so easily altered.

“Hollis, madam,” Fraser supplied lightly. He looked away then, for a moment, and moved his gaze out of the grasp of her own so he could eye her face—scrutinize the shape of her brow and the curve of her cheeks.

The design was so familiar—so like the noblewoman’s. This must be her.

Yet why had she opted to dress in cruder fabrics? Why had she abandoned her finer clothes?

Then the woman’s eyes brightened, and the line of her smile grew firm and certain. The strength spilled into the curves of her face, and when she spoke, her voice was sure and warm. “Mr. Hollis! Of course—of course.” A light chuckle caught her tongue, and its sound curled pleasantly about the shells of Fraser’s ears. “Forgive me, love; I’m afraid that today my mind’s gotten a fix for, ah, _wandering_.”

A delightful warmth softened the line of Fraser’s mouth, and the corners of his smile pressed again at the bottoms of his eyes. “No harm, no foul, madam,” he replied. His tone was light, and the warmth that had been gathering in the back of his throat moved now to the tip of his tongue. “It is I, in any case, who should apologize for moving to obstruct you.” His eyes fled briefly to the bundle of heather she cradled in her arms before returning to meet her gaze, “I merely wanted to make my partner’s and mine own gratitude to you known.

“I do not believe that our immense thanks was adequately extended when we first made your acquaintance.” Fraser spoke slowly, and his tone was as low as it was sincere. “So I’d like to tell you now, that if not for your gracious intervention, I’m quite sure Wells and I would’ve been forced into circumstances quite…_inhospitable_ to the aspirations of men such as ourselves.” The severity of his tone tugged at his smile until it was a shape as sober as his voice, and his attention did not once buck or flee from the woman’s face. “Indeed, a good portion of our current fortune is due, in no small part, to your kind ministrations, and we are incredibly grateful to you for having sought fit to aid us.”

Silence was the woman’s immediate response to Fraser’s thanks. For a moment, she merely stood there and stared at him, peered at him as though she were a creature of stone, a statue carved by an artist so skilled he’d imbued a motionless rock with the pretense of life. She did not blink, and the line of her mouth did not quiver; the curve of her smile remained firm, frozen in a moment in time.

The sounds of the square came to fill the space left by her silence; the rattle of the cabs and the chatter of townspeople became suddenly loud, and they settled uncomfortably in the emptiness meant for her voice.

But then the curl of her smile began to melt, and something glossy and bright welled in her eyes. It was clear in color, and its sheen was that of polished glass, of brilliant, starry crystal.

Tears. They were tears.

Concern, hot and sudden, flared to life in Fraser’s chest, and without thinking, he drew closer to the woman. The worry pulled at his lips and brow, and his hands began moving, reaching out to offer support to her own.

“Madam?” he inquired. A hot blade of panic sunk into his tone, bolstering the concern already spilling into the planes of his face. “_Madam_, are you alright?”

The tips of his fingers brushed her sleeves, but just before they could curl about her arms she suddenly blinked, and a gasp of air lifted her shoulders and chest.

“Oh, p-pardon—pardon me.” The words fell hastily from her trembling lips, and their shapes and sounds were broken and warbled, not at all like the tones that had earlier curled off her tongue. Her eyelids fluttered open and close, and she grabbed for her handkerchief and quickly dabbed at the corners of her eyes. “Goodness, I—oh, I’m terribly sorry.” She swallowed, but her voice remained warbled, distorted by the tears that had failed to escape her eyes. “I—I don’t know what came over me.”

“You’ve no need to apologize, Madam.” A frown pulled at Fraser’s lips, and he watched the woman intently, peered at her through eyes narrowed with worry. “The fault is my own; I didn’t mean to upset you.”

The woman blinked away whatever tears her handkerchief hadn’t absorbed, and then she shook her head. “No, I—I must apologize.” She swallowed again, and the line of her mouth thinned until it was too narrow and tight to quiver, but her eyes did not yet flee to his own. “My mind is certainly…elsewhere, today.” Her gaze finally rose to meet his, but the color of her irises was dull and pale, and the light that brightened her eyes was now harsh and cold. “I’m afraid I must ask that you excuse me. I’m terribly sorry for any distress I caused you, Mr. Hollis, and I—I certainly must be going.”

The concern warming Fraser’s chest did not cool at the woman’s words, and though she began to turn, he quickly moved to obstruct her path. “What good, respectable gentleman forces a woman he has nearly brought to tears to travel alone?” Fraser spoke kindly, but his tone was firmer, strengthened as it was by thick, hot worry. “Wherever this destination of yours lies, I shall accompany you there. I owe you this, at the very least, if not as recompense for the aid you offered Wells and I, then as restitution for causing you such undue strife.”

Surprise flashed in the woman’s eyes, and the line of her mouth softened, startled out of its firmness, but then she frowned and replied, “You needn’t concern yourself with my affairs, love. I’m loath to squander any more of your time.”

Worry left a less than delightful taste in Fraser’s mouth, but despite its sour nature and unpleasant pull, he tried for a smile as kind and winsome as the one the woman had offered him when he’d first met her. “I promise you, Madam: you can misuse it no worse than I often have,” he replied. He spoke lightly, with a lilt as humorous and joking as he could manage. “Besides, I’m rather intent on familiarizing myself with the arrangement of this lovely town.”

Fraser glanced away from the woman as he spoke, his eyes moving to fly about the square and all the persons milling within it. More had appeared while he’d been engaged in conversation with the woman, and now the streets were dominated by the clatter of cabs and shoes.

“Is that so?” the woman replied. Her voice no longer quivered or shook, and the words that fell from her lips were as clear as day. He felt her watching him, sensed how her eyes crept over his face, scrutinizing him in a manner that was not wholly pointed, yet not entirely kind.

“It is.” Fraser nodded, and his eyes fled back to her face. Her gaze was narrowed, but confusion clouded it, and the befuddlement painted her lips and cheeks a careful, suspicious color. “To suffer disorientation is quite inconvenient.”

The woman inclined her head, and some of the grayness infecting her watchful eyes faded, devoured by the beginnings of a soft and curious smile. “Why, yes, I suppose it is.”

The heat of Fraser’s concern began to cool, and the warmth that lingered in his chest was now pleasant and comfortable. His own grin began to curl more easily into the apples of his cheeks, and he inclined his head expectantly to the woman.

“Now, where exactly is this lovely destination of yours?” He glanced briefly at her arms, at the beautiful bouquet of heather she’d purchased and now cradled. The violet flowers had blossomed in delicate clusters, and they stood with utmost elegance and poise, their graceful heads turned outward to entertain the flattery of an admirer. “Are you to surprise a lucky soul with this stunning bouquet?”

The woman’s gaze fell to her arms, and Fraser saw her grip upon them tighten. A thought—an emotion, there and gone as quickly as it had come—flickered briefly in her eyes, and for a moment, a frown, dark and somber, soured her expression. Yet she then swallowed, as though she recalled where exactly it was she stood, and the shadow faded in the light of a careful, and perhaps not entirely unfounded, suspicion. If that indeed was the name of the hue that brightened her gaze.

Fraser knew the color of doubt, of dark, cynical suspicion, yet the shade that colored the woman’s face was not quite as ugly as the hues with which he was accustomed. It was too pale—too oddly curious.

“Yes, I suppose I am,” the woman began slowly, her voice low and her words embittered by her frown, “in a manner of sorts.”

Fraser’s grin wavered, and the warmth hugging his lungs and heart flickered, but then he swallowed. “Well, we’d best be off, then,” he chirped. The words leaped from his tongue, and in the air they bounced, light and pleasant. “After you, madam.”

The woman’s eyelids closed and then fluttered open, as though she’d witnessed some wonder or surprise, and then her eyes flew to him, and her frown faltered. In its stead, a small, befuddled smile began to creep across her face, and she regarded him carefully. Her gaze was intense, curious, as though he were some foreign creature, some beast of fantasy and whimsy.

Then a sigh, small and perhaps dusted with the slightest amusement, parted her lips, and she turned. “This way, love.”

She began walking, and Fraser followed after her. He walked with a purposeful bounce in his step, and his eyes moved to observe the buildings and streets they passed. He tried to memorize their shapes and designs, to commit their placement to memory, but as they continued to walk, the homes and shops began to dissipate, and the cobblestone road bled into dirt.

A sharp, nettling curiosity rose to prod at the back of Fraser’s skull, and his wandering eyes fled to the woman. “Your lucky recipient doesn’t live in town?”

The woman’s head didn’t turn, but Fraser saw her eyes shift to him. “She…doesn’t, no, but it’s a short walk.” Then her gaze fell to his legs, and she inclined her head before returning her attention to the path ahead. “You _can _always return the way we came, love. You needn’t accompany me for the entirety of my walk.”

Her words did little but feed the curiosity seeping into Fraser’s skull, and he quickened his pace. “I’m afraid you underestimate me, madam,” he started cooly. A simper curled his lips, and he raised a confident brow, but his tone was as light as it was purposefully boastful, and a glint of humor flashed in his eyes. “No walk—short nor long—has ever daunted me.”

“Oh, I never supposed that one could, love.” The woman glanced at him again out of the corner of her eye, but now, despite his attempts at playful banter, Fraser saw a frown pull at the woman’s lips. Her hold upon the bouquet in her arms tightened, and the line of her mouth thinned and soured. “But I—I do think it fit to warn you: the place we’re headed is indeed rather…_dreadful_.”

Fraser’s smile faltered, but then he shook his head and forced a light laugh. “You are quite adamant, madam, and, might I add, rather persuasive,” he began, his eyes moving to watch her face, “but I am quite stalwart myself, and I shan’t be discouraged by any argument or coercion.”

The woman’s head turned now, and Fraser thought he saw something bright and hot flash briefly in her eyes—surprise, or perhaps frustration—but then another soft sigh parted her lips, and a reluctant, pale color stole into the flesh of her cheeks. She stopped, and Fraser paused as well, confusion rising to tug at the corners of his determined smile.

“Here we are, then.” She turned, and Fraser’s gaze moved from her to the place wherein the recipient of her lovely gift lived.

Yet his eyes caught upon the fence—the menacing, wrought iron pickets rising like blackened skeleton fingers from the earth. They stood like spears, like the pikes of medieval soldiers, their sharp arrowheads poised to threaten the soft-bellied sky. The pickets glowered at him—loomed over him like a long, strange shadow—but then his eyes moved to the space behind the fence. There, arranged in careful rows and columns across a kempt green lawn, were lines of shaped stone.

The layout was familiar; he knew all too well the design of the dead’s final, earthly home.

A breath, sharp and biting, caught in the back of Fraser’s throat, and dread, as heavy and dark as lead, spilled into the pit of his gut. The realization was a whip cracking like lightning above his head, and the deafening thunder that followed shook his bones. He could hear their rattling, the uncomfortable high-pitched ring, squealing in the canals of his inner ears.

_Shit._

“Mr. Hollis?”

The woman’s voice was a gunshot, and in the back of Fraser’s skull the iron ball found its home. He turned quickly, his eyes leaping blindly from the somber tombstones to the woman’s face.

She watched him cooly; her expression was that of a painted face, a visage too calm and blank to capture true vivacity, but in her eyes, a strange light burned. Its color was nearly that of curiosity, of wonderment in discovering how he might now act, or perhaps it was a look of knowing—the brightness of pale insight, of already supposing the result of his expected approach.

She stood beside the gate, and the flowers in her arms seemed now paler in the sunlight than they had earlier been. Perhaps the shadows of the wrought iron gate had stolen their color, sucked the life out of them like some thin-boned parasite.

“Yes, M-Madam?” Fraser’s tongue stumbled over the line of his teeth, and his voice sounded muffled to his own ears, deafened as it was by the ringing clotting his head.

Why had she come to a cemetery? What of the catacombs?

The woman’s eyes were not soft, and the line of her mouth was as cold and harsh as the wrought iron pickets surrounding the cemetery, but her voice was not unkind, and it dulled the ringing pressing at his ears. “Are you alright?”

A sour taste invaded Fraser’s mouth, but he did what he could to swallow it. His mistake was glaring, and his ignorance was brighter than ten thousand suns. He could feel their heat, how they scathed him, how their hellfire burned his bones as black as the wrought iron pickets, but still, he tried to breathe.

“Yes, of course,” he replied. The heat was agonizing, and in the flames his skin was like wax, dripping from his bones and sizzling in the fire, but still, he moved forward. Still, he grabbed hold of the gate and tugged it open, forced the soppy remains of his muscles and flesh to pull at his scorched bones. “After you, Madam.”

Something gleamed briefly in the woman’s eyes. Its sheen was pale in color, like surprise, but then it was swallowed, and the creature that had devoured it was softer than the coldness that had darkened her gaze. “Thank you.”

She entered the cemetery, and again, Fraser followed after her. The gate fell shut behind them, and with the clang came a rushing sound, a roar like that of a waterfall, drowning the ringing noise that had pressed so fervently at Fraser’s eardrums.

He did not turn his eyes upon the tombstones or crosses, nor the mounds of freshly turned dirt lying at the foot of the less-worn headstones. They were the beds of the sleeping, and a misplaced glance might startle awake those of lighter beds. Yet perhaps they had already been disturbed; his heart was but a drum, and its beat could likely wake even the heaviest of sleepers.

The woman finally paused again, and as Fraser moved to stand beside her, the roar in his head fell suddenly quiet. He could hear the rustle of leaves—the call of birds and whisper of wind. The sounds were abrupt, nearly startling, but his hands were already rising to grab the brim of his hat, and he brought it to his chest just as the woman was bending to place her flowers upon the grave. She remained there, knelt upon the grass and soil, her hands resting upon her lap and her gaze turned upon the gravestone.

In his newfound silence, Fraser heard a soft murmur escape the woman’s lips. It was a sentence, a quiet and intimate message.

“Happy birthday, Mother.”

Fraser closed his eyes, and a wave of hot shame rolled across his scorched bones. He should not be here; he should not be listening to such private murmurings. He did his best, then, to deafen his spying ears, and bowed his head as she paid her respects. Then, both out of habit and guilt, his mouth fell open, and to the departed soul the same low prayer he’d always murmured over his own mother’s grave.

Silence followed his prayer, and when he dared raise his gaze, he saw that the woman had stilled. No sounds fell from her lips, nor did any movements disturb her form. She was again like stone, hard and inanimate, frozen in time.

Yet then the curve of her spine softened, and she moved to stand. Immediately, Fraser offered her his hand, and she took it quietly. At first she did not look at him—did not tear her eyes free of her mother’s tombstone. The silence was too pressing, too heavy a blanket and forceful a hand, but then, after a pause, she inclined her head in the direction they had come, and they began walking again.

The quiet’s weight lessened the farther from the headstone they moved, and when the cemetery and its eternal residents were far behind them, and the quiet’s burden was no more than that of a feather, the woman spoke.

“There is a poet, a nobleman of the name Count Isidore Janvier,” the woman began softly. She spoke slowly, as though every word that fell from her lips carried a weight as great as that of a mountain. “Every other year or so, he hosts a great party, and many an affluent nobleman and woman attends. I believe one of these celebrations is, in fact, planned for later this year.”

Fraser’s attention fled to the woman, but her head was turned away from him, and he could glimpse only the curve of her cheek. “Pardon, Madam?”

The woman drew closer to him and turned her head, but Fraser could see only the line of her mouth: her lips, pulled into a knowing and somber frown. “Skepticism is a versatile tool.” The woman’s voice lowered, and a warning lilt came to color her soft tone. “Keep a doubtful eye turned upon your benefactors, dear. They are fickle creatures, and they will cast you aside just as readily as they choose to venerate you.”

Her voice was quiet and smooth, and her words were like a whisper, a murmur meant only for his ears. It was a strange and somber warning, a death knell tolling for a man still living.

The woman raised her head, and in her eyes, Fraser saw his own face reflected. In her pupils, his own expression seemed to him dark and strange, but her gaze was not wholly unkind, nor her tone lacking totally in softness. “Watch your step, Mr. Hollis. I should hate to see you fall.”

Then she drew away, and the sounds of the town rushed to fill the void. Fraser watched her leave, and something strange and thin wrapped its blackened fingers around his heart. The heat that had accompanied him during his earlier walk felt now suddenly cold and unpleasant, and the toll of the death knell echoed ominously in his ears.

Or perhaps he was mistaken, and the ring was but the beat of his waxen heart.

* * *

**ᴛʜᴇ ꜱᴀʟᴇꜱᴍᴀɴ.**


	6. ISIDORE

**warning:** descriptions of alcohol; mild gore (figurative)

**ᴅʀɪɴᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡɪɴᴇ**

* * *

**_THE SWEET TASTE OF WINE LINGERED ON THE FLESH _**of Isidore’s tongue, but from the back of his throat, its burn was slowly fading, melting like the wax of an old candle. Its dying light flickered in the air, flashing across a sea of faces, of fine coats and waistcoats, and delicate skirts and hats. Buckles and buttons caught its glint, and in their metal the light shimmered, winking at him as though it were some friend, some mute confidant so familiar that the smallest of smiles and shortest of glances was worth as much, if not more, than the most lengthy word or phrase.

Follow me, it mouthed, before turning, vanishing into the throng of bodies and wine glasses. It moved quickly, without waiting to see if Isidore would indeed heed its call, but perhaps it disappeared with haste for it knew he would chase after it.

The sounds of chatter—of the motions of persons besides himself—swallowed the tap of his own footsteps, and so he moved without noise: a ghost, weaving through crowds of the noble living. He walked past strangers and friends, cut through them like the bow of a boat, sharp and swift. Their faces did not turn to watch him pass; their eyes were blind to him, or perhaps they found their gazes too fixated upon their partners to see their host slip like some spy past their ranks.

The light twisted and twirled in the air, and snaked and curled around the darker bodies of his guests like sunshine in street puddles, shimmering in the midst of ugly grime—the gleam of a diamond, a flame in the empty dark, flickering with a warmth that was bright and pleasant. It pirouetted and twirled as though it thought itself a dancer, and perhaps it had reason to think so, for it moved with a ballerina’s grace and poise, a fluidity belonging only to divine talent and finely honed skill.

In that short moment, as it paused to dance across a stage that did not exist, he nearly grew close enough to grasp it. It was almost there, in his hands; a second within reach. Yet just as he was catching up to it, when he was a hair short of standing close enough to demand of it its reasons for stringing him along, it spun out of its graceful dance and disappeared into the crowd. The mass of bodies and cloth swallowed it with utmost voracity, brilliant shimmer and all, and he turned immediately to follow it.

A fire was burning in his chest, an eagerness like nettles spreading down into his fingertips. The sweet melody curling from the instruments of the musicians he’d selected for the event faded to a hum that rumbled dully in the back of his skull; there was no sound in his head, only desire for possession, for the having of whatever treasure the light had wished to bestow unto him.

He squeezed through the crowd of his guests, offered pardons and excuses when his hand or leg or arm brushed accidentally against the body or limb of another, and when he reached the other side, his eyes fled quickly about the room, scouring it for a glimpse or glimmer of his silent guide. The light had gone this way; he had seen it hasten in this direction, where it could disappear with ease behind the shape of persons more corporeal than itself.

He found it, then; his eyes discovered its shimmer gleaming at a woman’s throat. It sat there pleasantly, content to shine against the flesh of this noblewoman, to swim in her eyes and delight in the shape of her figure. Her familiar figure, with youthful face and design; a visage that, with every encounter made, carved itself deeper into the folds of Isidore’s mind, so at last it dominated the space behind his eyes—the land of thoughts too strange and moon-soaked for a world ruled by the sun—and emerged then to adulterate the concrete shapes of separate persons and objects.

She bled into his ink and quill, and in the thoughts he pressed to parchment her image thrived, full and yet hollow—concrete and still so abstract, for even the firmest and most detailed of phrases failed in some manner to totally encompass her being. She was too unknown, too far beyond the boundaries of the realm he inhabited to be adequately evaluated by the infuriating limitations of his language.

All the words in his repertoire, the phrases and idioms and similes, could form only imperfect imitations of her. A hollow smile; the ghost of a voice. The vaguest hint of perfume; the shadow of her warmth. An image standing just out of reach, lingering in a space so near to his own the tips of his fingers could just graze the cuff of her sleeve.

Even her familiarity was vague: youthful nostalgia made translucent with time, visited again only with lenses colored by wistful recollection. The foggy memory of a girl nearly hidden by her chaperone, peering with wide, curious eyes out the window of a carriage that had pulled into one of his uncle’s estates. He could recall the shine of her gaze, how the sunlight had graced her cheeks and fallen reluctantly across her face; it had been so hesitant to bring her into view, to pull her out of the shade. Perhaps it had not desired to share the sight of her, to grace him with the knowledge of her existence, but something had forced its hand—fate or coincidence, or perhaps even divine intervention.

Now he knew her, knew of her. Now he was more aware of the presence of a girl with wide eyes and careful disposition, who moved discreetly in the shadows just beyond his circle of light and gazed in a most curious manner upon the persons around her. And when he spied her again, young and confident, walking in stride with her mother and bearing with grace and ease the glittering burden of sunlight, he supposed already the moonlit paths from which she hailed.

That day she drew nearer to the boundaries of his reach than she ever had before, close enough to be finally within his grasp. He could have grabbed her and brought her into his realm of understanding; he could have finally discovered who precisely she was and been certain of the designs of her heart.

Yet he had hesitated, and in the pause, she had fled. She had turned and ran far, far out his reach and disappeared into the depths of a world that was quick to embrace her. For years she had lain there quietly in the fog, asleep to his world, and her memory had crumbled like ancient ruins in the minds of those who had known her in the light.

From _his _mind, however, the images of her had never vanished nor faltered. Faded perhaps, though all memories do eventually. For Isidore had known her before she’d dressed in sunlight; he had been exposed to her existence prior to her advent into the wider world, and so then upon his memory, she had been ever more deeply engraved. 

He’d tried to call her out of the fog, to coax her back into his reach with flowering prose and wistful similes; messages hidden in lines and stanzas crying for her return—for a sign that she even still walked amongst the living. Every poem belonged to her; for her, they had been crafted. She was the play and the audience, and he but the translator, giving her a stage upon which to dance.

At first, there was no answer. She remained distant and unknown, cloaked in fog as thick as cloth. Then, one day, there was a sound, a glimpse of movement in the distance followed then by a shape, a figure advancing toward him, moving carefully through the fog. Then she stood before him again, appearing just as young and brilliant as she had the day she’d stepped back into the view of the highborn—as though she’d never at all left it.

Now, Isidore’s eyes moved eagerly to soak in the shape of her, to memorize her figure with deliberate care. The excitement that had been buzzing in his fingers roared now in his chest, and its warmth spilled out into the very tips of his toes.

She was here again, alone at the edge of his peripheral, balancing on the cusp of the realm he called his own. She was not bound to a lord much too old to adequately entertain her, nor occupied in conversation with persons with which Isidore was unfamiliar. Now he could reach out and touch her without hindrance, grasp her and pull her into his arms and make her finally real. Embrace her and be embraced by her—led and welcomed by her into the realm of day, where cloth was made of sunlight and thoughts weighed the same as feathers.

Yet then a man came into view; the light bounced off one of the buttons of his suit, gleaming now with a smile that made bare two sets of sharp teeth. He was a nobleman, a merchant by dress, with hair the color of dry soil. He was a stranger, but the woman did not greet him as such; when he moved to grasp the woman’s elbow, she turned to regard him warmly, invitingly. They stood close together, intimately so, and when the man inclined his head to murmur something into her ear, a light laugh escaped her lips.

The giggle rang clear and bright in Isidore’s head, but the sound was cold. Glass, glittering and unfeeling, crushed beneath a stranger’s heel and pressed firmly into the muscle of his heart. The broken shards were cold and biting, and their pointed chill spread like a steady disease into the greater confines of his ribcage.

Isidore stepped back, and the crowd did not hesitate to swallow him. She did not see him; the throng into which he vanished did not heed his presence. He was but a ghost again, a thought half-asleep, wandering along the edges of waking, so entrenched in his dead history that he could see only in terms of actions already taken.

His body moved slowly, as though trapped in a vat of molasses—dark, sticky hands moving to grasp him, to hold him firm despite how harshly he pulled—and his eyes would not shift from her glittering face or the scene to which it was bound. He was cold, so terribly cold. A helpless thing left abandoned in the snow, trembling from the harsh chill of a winter gale.

A dark-colored ache spread out from the wrist of his right hand; he could feel it settle, pressing into bones that cried of an old pain. It spread outward, down into his fingers and up into his elbow, still as sharp and full as the day in which it was born. It forced his hand to bend and quiver, shaking in fear of being much too weak to endure such agony.

He felt his arm moving, bringing his glass to his lips, but the rich red wine within was not still. It quivered and trembled from the shaking of his hand and rippled with blood-colored waves that in oceans warned of horrid storms, but the only clouds here were those that clotted his mind.

The wine washed over his tongue, and its warmth spread readily into his chest, chasing away the cold that had tried to suffocate him. He welcomed its taste, bitter-sweet and rich, more pleasant than the sour tang of old pain; he could swim in the serene waters, allow them to envelop him whole so that he might find rest in a bed that did not reek of solitude.

The burn was real and pleasant: a fire in a valley blanketed by snow. With its aid, he could melt away the hands that held him firm and steady the tremble of his hand and fingers, and his eyes could move again about the room, free to jump from person to person, settling upon friends and scrutinizing strangers.

He retreated to a far wall and took up a position near a set of white french doors, which opened out into an elegant statue garden. Cold, pale winter moonlight dusted the stone figures, and no lanterns had been placed to illuminate the garden pathways, but Isidore would not have needed them. He walked the garden often when the warm embrace of sleep eluded him, and slumber had never been quite fond of him. It treated him most unkindly, retreating just when he was in reach of it and flaying him with its wicked claws in the brief moments where it was within his grasp.

Perhaps he could escape out into the garden, let the warm burn of alcohol guard him against the chill of the winter night—turn his eyes upon the stone faces of cherubim and angels and divulge to them his darker desires, the secrets that came to life in the light of the moon and crawled like unholy abominations up the column of his spine. It would be rude; it would be wholly unbecoming of him. Yet was he not already acting in a manner totally impolite, haunting the room as he had? Pacing about it like some specter and peering out from the depths of its shadows, his fingers wrapped about the stem of his glass as though it were his tether to the mortal realm.

However, before Isidore could move to grasp the handle of the door, a familiar voice called out to him suddenly, stopping him just as the toes of his shoes were turning to the garden.

“There you are.” The words reached his ears with unbridled ease, politely affectionate and rich in tone, and when Isidore’s gaze fled to the man who addressed him, his eyes fell upon a man, a duke, with clear eyes and sharp dress.

“I was curious as to where you’d disappeared,” the duke continued. A smile played at his lips, but no grin brightened the man’s clear eyes; his gaze was far too sharp, too watchful to be clouded by the light of a smile. “Grown tired of your own party, have you?”

A taste, sour and unpleasant, started to rise in Isidore’s mouth, building as the burn of alcohol faded from his tongue. A sharp pain dug suddenly into the bones of his wrist, and the line of his mouth twitched, flickering into a shape that sat somewhere between a smile and a pained grimace.

“Good evening to you as well, Casimir,” he began quietly. His voice was soft and smooth, but a tightness underlined his tone, and he tightened his grip upon the bowl of his glass and swirled the wine within as though doing so might hide the tremors spreading slowly back into his fingers. “And no, though I must beg your pardon. I’m simply a tad…fatigued.” 

Casimir’s eyes were sharp and observant, and from within them glowed an intelligence that had been present in them since childhood; Isidore could recall the shape of that light, how odd it had appeared to him when he’d been first introduced to his younger cousin—how incredibly strange it had been to spy such a calculating gleam in the eyes of a boy not much younger than himself. 

The color of Casimir’s eyes was that of a clear sky, but the warmth that brightened them did not match that of the sun; it appeared too well-cut, too perfectly designed to be natural. Everything about him was precisely measured, his flaxen hair and Roman nose—his stature and mourning clothes—as though he were not a man, but a sculpture carved by the ancients; an Apollo or Hercules, formed from stone and chisel instead of flesh and bone.

How could he manage to appear so polished even in the face of so intimate a loss? Death was no common affair, and the passing of one’s wife, especially one as young as the duchess, was worthy of more than a simple mourning suit.

It was unnerving—unnatural—and yet all who came across him did little but sing his praises, so perhaps it was Isidore who was strange.

“Oh, you needn’t apologize, cousin.” Casimir’s voice was light, and he moved his hand as though to waive any perceived slight Isidore’s exhaustion could have inadvertently brought into being. “I found it a rather amusing exercise: hunting you down in this crowd.”

Isidore brought his glass to his lips and took a short, shallow sip, and the shaking in his hand settled to a slight quiver. “While it is certainly a relief to find that my lapse in competence was not wholly infuriating, I still must apologize,” he replied carefully. A slimy creature stirred in the pit of his stomach, shifting with lethargic reluctance amidst his intestines, and so he inhaled, and the scent of wine settled atop the creature’s head, softly imploring that it crawl back into bed. 

“If you insist,” Casimir replied without pausing. His pale eyes were clear but not open; his thoughts did not dance across his face with the same ease as they were wont to do in the gazes of others.

Casimir parted his lips to continue, but then his gaze shifted, and whatever phrase had stepped to the tip of his tongue vanished with the arrival of a name.

“Lord Lowe!” he called, and a man standing near them turned his head. “Why, hello! I feel as though I haven’t spied you in quite some time.”

The man’s face was familiar, and when his dark eyes settled upon Casimir and Isidore, recognition brightened his stare. He moved to stand beside them, and as he approached, memories surfaced, and the hazy details of an old plot crawled to the forefront of Isidore’s mind.

The flame in his chest that had been at once extinguished came flickering back to life, fainter now than it had earlier been. Perhaps there was still hope; perhaps he could still be brought into a realm of soft sunlight, welcomed gladly by his most constant muse.

“Duke Lebeau and Count Janvier—good evening!” Lord Lowe greeted them both pleasantly. “Indeed; it has been a while, hasn’t it?” His intelligent eyes were brightened by the curve of a polite smile, and his tone was light and conversational—warmed by a friendly laugh. “How have you two fared? Well, I hope?” 

Lord Lowe held out his hand, and Casimir shook it gladly, his clear eyes meeting the lawyer’s own. Isidore watched them both carefully, for though an eagerness that did not taste of wine now warmed his throat, he knew better than to jump head-first into waters as uncertain as those which Casimir navigated.

“As well as one can,” the duke replied. His deep voice wove pleasantly through the air, and his polite amiability softened the sounds of his consonants and vowels, but his words drew Lord Lowe’s eyes to his attire, and the smile that warmed the lawyer’s eyes soured into a sympathetic frown.

“I caught wind of the affair, but it seemed to me too awful to be true.” Lord Lowe’s tone was honest and somber, and the sympathy which colored his words was respectfully serious. “My sincerest condolences, my lord.”

Casimir nodded, and his own polite smile faltered. “It was a terrible surprise; I didn’t quite want to think it true at first, either.” He paused for a moment, and a fog came to cloud his clear eyes, but then he blinked, and another small smile played at his lips. “But I don’t believe Emma would have desired that I lament her passing. It was God’s will, and she is with Him now; I could not hope for better.”

Shameful heat spread into Isidore’s lungs, but cold doubt kept it contained. Perhaps it was the manner in which the emotions had colored Casimir’s face: one after the other, perfectly timed and measured in their severity. Or perhaps it was his memory of the funeral, the short glimpse he’d had of his cousin’s face when no one had been looking: a smile that was maliciously shaped, with a sharp curve and pointed ends, and clear eyes brimming with sickening and cold contentment—delight that tasted of poison and blood.

“I see,” Lord Lowe replied. He nodded and tried for a smile, but a sober color still lingered in his dark eyes. “I suppose, then, that we should not dwell on the subject any longer.” His gaze fled then to Isidore, and he began, his voice light so as to better change to a brighter topic, “How has your writing fared, Count Janvier? You were busy with a new poem when we last spoke, correct?”

Isidore inhaled, and the sharp scent of perfume filled his lungs. “Yes,” he began. He spoke tentatively, his smooth voice picking its way carefully over his tongue. “Recently, however, I’ve been at a bit of an impasse.” 

The lawyer’s eyes grew brighter with genuine concern, but a lighter color swam too in his gaze. Isidore saw the man’s fingers moving, dancing quietly against the bowl of his glass. “Really? Has your muse run off on you?”

“It could have; it’s certainly done so before,” Isidore replied.

“Well, that’s quite unfortunate.” The lawyer spoke sincerely, but the amusement that had been sparkling in his dark eyes bled into his tongue, and he continued, “Perhaps you should invest in a leash for the unruly thing.”

The man’s jest was not unkind, and Isidore could not help but smile inwardly at it. “Believe me, Lord Lowe,” he began lightly, “if it were possible, I would very well have caught and caged it years ago.”

“Assuming you _could _catch it,” Casimir added. His clear eyes were rich with amusement, and he drank quietly from his glass of dark red wine; a viewer amused by the light-hearted scene playing out before him. “I mean no offense, cousin, but I recall you having been a rather slow runner, with a persistent aversion to hunts.”

Isidore’s eyes fled to Casimir, and despite the pleasant tone of the duke’s voice, the pain in his wrist flared red hot once more. He tried to stifle the wince that had attempted to grab hold of his body, to not allow the memories of a smile as sharp as a knife to color the skin of his face.

“I’m afraid I fail to see the connection you’re attempting to draw.” Isidore took another sip of his wine, and his gaze moved momentarily to eye the contents of his glass. A small, lighter red puddle had collected at the base of the bowl, and the sight pressed uncomfortably at the back of his brain. He had little less than a sip left; had he already swallowed so much?

“I presumed you would,” Casimir chuckled. His clear eyes shone brightly, but perhaps the light was there only to distract from the darker shadows that undoubtedly lurked in the safety of the man’s skull. “Unfortunately, at the moment, I haven’t the time to walk you through the process.”

His gaze moved then to Lord Lowe, and a thought that appeared awfully sharp at the edges flashed across his face. “Ah, Lowe, lest I forget,” the duke began slowly, but Isidore supposed that his cousin had already carefully selected the words that would curl off his tongue, “I do recall when we last met that you had promised to speak with Lord Dupont personally regarding the terms of a certain contract.” Casimir’s clear eyes were not sharp or narrowed, and a polite smile still curled his lips, but a pressure that was not wholly pleasant filled his stare. “Have you done so?”

The amusement brightening Lord Lowe’s eyes flickered, and the line of his mouth wavered beneath a thought that bled like gray-colored molasses into the flesh of his cheeks. Isidore saw the man’s fingers move quicker against the bowl of his glass, tapping fitfully to a tune to which Isidore was not privy.

“I…have,” the lawyer replied after a pause. The words fell hesitantly from his lips, and the confidence that had once bolstered his voice failed now to color his tone.

Casimir did not miss the change, and though his smile only fell into the shape of a confused frown, Isidore thought for a moment that he had spied something spiked shift in the darkness of the duke’s pupils. “Have you?” Casimir’s voice was not tight, but a sort of suspicion underlined it; Isidore could hear the doubt, sitting just beneath the man’s tongue.

“I have,” Lowe repeated, and this time his words did not fall so weakly from his lips. “I assure you, my lord, I certainly have done that which I had promised.” The lawyer paused again, and his tongue shot out briefly to wet his lips. Reluctance colored his dark eyes, and an emotion that was nearly identical to shame sunk into the apples of his cheeks. “Unfortunately, however, my…conversation with André did not play out as I had hoped.”

The flame flickering in Isidore’s chest froze suddenly, and a question jumped immediately to the tip of his tongue. “Pardon?”

Lord Lowe’s eyes fled to Isidore, but Casimir’s gaze remained fixed upon the lawyer’s face. His clear eyes were no longer bright, and the pressure that was his stare grew heavier—sharper.

“I argued as well as I could to the practical aspects of a more…_open _contract,” Lowe began sincerely, his intelligent eyes flickering between Casimir and Isidore, “but gentlemen, you must understand: André was adverse to even the mere _thought_ of a distribution. He refused to allow explanation; he wouldn’t even allot me a minute of discussion regarding the subject.” Lowe shook his head, and then a sigh, heavy and regretful, escaped his lips. “I am loath to admit it, but I grossly misjudged his willingness to cooperate. Now I fear I may have insulted him, for he certainly took offense to my suggestion.”

The ache in Isidore’s wrist spread again into his fingers, biting and chewing viciously at his tendons, and the eagerness in his chest was now little more than a lukewarm heat pressing against his lungs—disappointment settling like heavy stones in the pit of his stomach. His hand was shaking—a brittle leaf in an unforgiving wind—and when he moved to swallow what was left of his wine, the tremors in his fingers nearly sent it down the front of his suit.

“That is certainly...unfortunate.” Casimir’s tone was low, and a flatness dulled his clear eyes. It was a look of displeasure, gray and unpleasant and warning of the possible emergence of impolite expressions. “Is Lord Dupont here now?”

Lord Lowe shook his head and said something in reply, some phrase that did not sound at all hopeful, and though Isidore could see the man’s lips moving, he heard nothing of what actually fell from his lips; the men seemed to stand now farther from Isidore than they had originally, receding like the tide into the ocean of nearby guests.

Casimir’s gaze fled to Isidore, and Lowe’s stare was not far behind. The two of them scrutinized the count, and the weights of their gazes were not equal; Lowe watched with curiosity, interest that was eager while still remaining light, while Casimir’s glare was that of scrutiny not wholly kind.

The saliva in Isidore’s mouth had dried, and the pitiful drop of wine he had swallowed had hardly wet his tongue. His wrist was burning. _Burning_. Like something was stepping down on it, crushing it while he watched on in horror. White-hot agony racing into his fingertips and drawing tears to his eyes, and the room was too hot, and his chest was too cold and he needed something warm, something to take away the pain dear God _please_.

A servant stopped by then, and in his clutches lay a familiar dark-colored bottle. Candlelight shone in the glass, bright and piercing, and the tears in Isidore’s eyes took the reflection and with it, drew a soft halo about the bottle’s body, dressing it in virtues that were wine-red in color.

Isidore did not hesitate to hold his glass out to the servant, though he took care to grasp the stem with his left hand. The servant took his offering, and into it, he poured blood-colored salvation—aid rich with all that Isidore lacked.

When the glass was returned, he did not hesitate to devour the grace that swirled within the crystalline bowl. He drank it and tasted it and swallowed it with a desperation that was nearly reverent; it was a sacred thing—divine blood pouring out of a creature so godly that the sight of it risked blinding him, and yet, if given the opportunity, he would not hesitate to gaze upon its glory.

He closed his eyes, and the warmth of alcohol welcomed him gladly, enveloping him in an embrace that was nearly as sweet as that which he desired. If he concentrated firmly upon the thought, perhaps he could, for a moment, trick himself into believing that the heat was not a product of wine, but the benefit of a companionship consecrated by God.

He inhaled, and the taste of the wine warmed his lungs and softened the edges of the stones rolling in his stomach, and when he opened his eyes, he met the gazes of the two men who watched him without flinching.

“No; I’m afraid not.” The words curled smoothly off his tongue and fell from his lips with the ease necessary of them. “He made it quite apparent that he was without an abundance of time this year. Ergo, he was unable to make an appearance.”

Lowe’s frown deepened, and the rhythm of his fingers quickened, tapping so hastily against the glass that if a beat had been present in his movements it was now swallowed by his speed. Thoughts swirled in his dark eyes, but the light that had once brightened them was now dim.

“I suppose that’s the end of it, then,” Lowe murmured after a pause. His voice was quieter now, softened by a prickling discontent, and his fidgeting fingers suddenly stilled and tightened about the stem of his wine glass.

Slowly, Isidore began to nod his head, but the warmth in his chest helped to soften the bitter sting of disappointment. Its biting ache would not settle in his heart until later, when it would be cradled and carried readily by slumber, malicious and cruel.

“What of the woman?” Casimir asked suddenly. Isidore’s gaze fled to his cousin, but the man was not watching them; Casimir’s gaze was focused on some space behind Isidore, and his free hand had lifted to his neck, massaging it as though to alleviate some lingering ache. “The courtesan—is she here?”

Isidore froze, but the warmth in his chest would not allow for any suspicious reluctance. “Indeed she is,” he replied without pause. His lips moved with a mind that was not his own, and the pleasantness which colored his voice was warm with the taste of wine. “She arrived with her husband; I did spy both of them somewhat recently, in fact. Why do you ask?”

Isidore saw Casimir’s clear eyes darken at the mention of the man to which Madam Draper was married; it was a quick look, there and gone as quickly as it had arrived, but he had spied it. He knew he had; he could recognize the shape of it, so familiar he was with its colors and contours. It was a foul discontent, displeasure so red and dark it bordered on enmity: hatred so malicious, so rotten and vile that it could be lessened only by the taste of blood.

Yet the darkness was quick to hide, and when Casimir spoke, his tone was light and conversational—completely devoid of the vitriol that had briefly sharpened his gaze. “I feel it would be unwise of us to assume Lord Dupont’s reservations reflect those of Madam Draper.” Casimir paused for a moment to swallow; the sound of the woman’s married name perhaps had left a sour taste in his mouth. “She may, in fact, prove to be the solution to this dilemma of ours.”

“Are you certain?” Lowe asked. Uncertainty coated his words, but a small, faint gleam of hope brightened his dark eyes.

“I am not doubtful,” Casimir replied slowly; his voice was smooth, and his words glinted with a silvery, metallic sheen, “but I should hate to be wrong, especially if the brunt of my faulty assumption were to fall upon you good men.”

Casimir’s clear eyes moved to Isidore, and his hand dropped from his neck. “Izzy, cousin,” he continued, his tone oddly affectionate. And of course it would be; for what other reason would his cousin refer to him by his childhood nickname? “Would you kindly introduce me to your guests?”

There were shards of glass in Isidore’s mouth; their chill seeped into his tongue, and the taste of them—cold, glittering nothingness—devoured the memory of wine. He clenched his jaw, and one of the shards splintered, fragmenting into sharp splinters too small for the eye to see. Yet still, he felt them moving in his mouth, digging and pressing into the soft flesh of his gums and tongue until the taste of his blood could coat his teeth.

He swallowed, and the shards moved down his throat, gouging crooked lines into the walls of his esophagus. How unfair of Casimir; how wickedly cruel he was, pretending to play fair, acting as though he intended at all to share whatever rewards this plot of his would acquire. For he would not; he had always been possessive of that which he deemed his, and Isidore had been a fool to ever entertain any hope that his cousin had grown out of his childhood habits.

Perhaps this was what Casimir had desired all along: that Lowe would fail in his supplications, and Lord Dupont should be so offended by his lawyer as to forfeit his attendance. Only then could Casimir step forward, his own selfish desires carefully disguised behind a sympathetic front.

Or perhaps Isidore’s mind was playing tricks on him again, running wild with assumptions that were seldom supported. In reality, he had only _thought _to have seen a malicious smile curl Casimir’s lips at the young duchess’s funeral, and the darkness he had spied briefly in his cousin’s eyes was but a trick of the light.

“Gladly.” The shards stuck in his mouth crunched between his teeth as he spoke, and the sound echoed dully in his head. It was a hollow noise, an empty hope, and yet desire at all was better than indifference, or, at the very least, more palatable.

Casimir smiled, and the sight of the man’s grin brought a sour taste to Isidore’s mouth. The duke’s gaze moved to Lowe, and he offered the man a winsome smile. “_Adieu_, Lowe,” he began, and the satisfaction in his voice was so palpable Isidore could very well move to touch it. “We shall return to you victorious, or we shan’t return at all.”

Lowe nodded in return, and Isidore tried not to see the small, hopeful smile that then spread tentatively across the man’s lips. Lowe, too, was foolish, but his ignorance was rightly excusable.

Isidore began to move forward, and Casimir followed him, or, perhaps, only allowed Isidore to believe himself to be the one leading them. Sheep could not lead, and Isidore was always so eager to follow: first his father, now his cousin.

Yet perhaps that too was a hallucination, and he was reading between lines that did not exist. There was no blood in his mouth; the glass in his stomach was a figment of his imagination, and the pain in his wrist was but the phantom of an injury that had healed long, long ago. He was simply too blinded by his own foolishness to spy that which lay bare before him: the dream he had spent his life chasing had never been his to possess. His muse was not, in fact, his, and in supposing such he proved himself only a pitiable excuse of a man.

This was the truth, ugly and unpleasant, formed of thoughts as hideous as the monsters that lurked behind his eyes. It was detestable, hateable, and he did so abhor it. Hate, for fear brought it too close to his chest for it to be properly ignored, and ignorance was far too comfortable to be shirked.

He brought his glass to his mouth, and when he parted his lips, the blood within the bowl spilled over the rim and coated his teeth and tongue. The chill of the wine was pleasant, and its taste agreeable; it melted the glass in his stomach and pushed away thoughts that were less than palatable, and then it wrapped its arms about his chest and moved its lips to his ear.

There is nothing for which to worry, it murmured, and its voice was all too familiar—feminine and sweet, promising a future that he would never have. All will be well. Casimir has sworn altruism, and when has your cousin ever gone back on his word?

* * *

**ᴛʜᴇ ᴘᴏᴇᴛ.**


End file.
